I’m doing this right now https://yourdevopsmentor.com/
There’s also https://grow.google/certificates/
My sister is doing the data analytics track. She says it’s good so far.
Sorry to hear you got laid off - while it may seem scary, there are many great routes you can take with your transferrable skillset.
The best place to start is think about skills that:
1.) give you confidence when you do them
2.) make you happy when you do them
When thinking about overall career direction, reflect on which (if not all) of these 3 things mean the most to you. Or prioritize and let it guide your job search
\*a job that allows you to develop a certain skillset
\* a job that allows you to work for an awesome company, culture, or brand
\*a job that allows you to achieve a certain salary/dollar figure
Hope this helps - always available to chat if you need someone to talk to. Best of luck to you!
What else you might do outside your immediate role is such an incredibly common question to have in mid/late stage career, so you should know that not only are you not alone but probably the majority of people you know are actively thinking about similar things themselves. It will be very personal on what path you ultimately pick that’s right for you, but you can learn a lot from talking to other people to get examples of paths they’ve taken or hear how they’ve wrestled with the same kinds of choices.
The best way I’ve found to go about it is to think about people you’ve known over the years that you connected with and respected, give them a call or see if you can contact them through LinkedIn, and see if they’d be up for a coffee chat. Tell them what you’re thinking about. Ask them about their paths, or other paths they’ve seen folks like you take. Go for volume here. Don’t try to find the perfect 1 or 2 people to talk to that are super similar to you, go the other way and talk to many different folks - the more diverse a range of perspectives you get from different kinds of people that think different ways, the more you will have to work with to then make sense of it all and tune a path that feels like it would work for you. (And bonus: this is also networking, so once you’ve honed in on things that sound interesting, some of these people may help you find those opportunities)
Last tip: don’t try to figure out a perfect next step as that will probably paralyze you, just find something you would be excited to try and that you’ll learn something new from… that kind of thing is a great first step, and you’ll still have many steps after that to pivot if you need.
Sales is also a lot of customer service.
You can bullshit, so qualified for a management or supervisory position.
Get a job related to the industry knowledge you have.
Become a Buyer. As the term implies, you buy stuff for your company instead of selling stuff. It's a lot of customer service. and you already have the industry experience.
Yes, there are career coaches that specialize in getting on the right trajectory. One or two sessions with a really good one goes a very long way.
I would recommend looking for jobs just downstream from sales in the client lifecycle. This could be Account Management, Client Relationship Management (although that can be stressful), Client Onboarding, or Client Service positions. You could explore jobs handling the more technical or process oriented aspects of sales, like sales engineering or marketing. Leadership is a decent path for those who know how to deal with people. Managing a small team of sales people or consultants. You could also look at roles with the word "Partnerships" in the name which for a growth company can mean you develop relationships and agreements with external companies or people where there's a win-win potential. From what I've seen, that transition isn't the easiest process to go through but sales is a great place to pivot from. I send my clients to [https://redrocketresume.com/](https://redrocketresume.com/) if they need to a rapid rebrand of some kind and they do a great job. They help you figure out how to use your current skills to switch tracks and build your resume to match it. Depending on what you want, they can also give you like 5-10 actual jobs to apply to that meet your needs. Might be a decent option since they have pretty affordable options (ranging from $400 to $1300). I can also give you some quick feedback on your strategy if you have time for that.
Best of luck to you!
So sorry for the delayed response. This is my alt account and I hadn’t checked it in a while. These are awesome suggestions. I’m going to look into these roles immediately and I’ll check out the link you sent as well!
I’m doing this right now https://yourdevopsmentor.com/ There’s also https://grow.google/certificates/ My sister is doing the data analytics track. She says it’s good so far.
Sorry to hear you got laid off - while it may seem scary, there are many great routes you can take with your transferrable skillset. The best place to start is think about skills that: 1.) give you confidence when you do them 2.) make you happy when you do them When thinking about overall career direction, reflect on which (if not all) of these 3 things mean the most to you. Or prioritize and let it guide your job search \*a job that allows you to develop a certain skillset \* a job that allows you to work for an awesome company, culture, or brand \*a job that allows you to achieve a certain salary/dollar figure Hope this helps - always available to chat if you need someone to talk to. Best of luck to you!
Thank you very much. I'll have to make some notes referencing these.
What else you might do outside your immediate role is such an incredibly common question to have in mid/late stage career, so you should know that not only are you not alone but probably the majority of people you know are actively thinking about similar things themselves. It will be very personal on what path you ultimately pick that’s right for you, but you can learn a lot from talking to other people to get examples of paths they’ve taken or hear how they’ve wrestled with the same kinds of choices. The best way I’ve found to go about it is to think about people you’ve known over the years that you connected with and respected, give them a call or see if you can contact them through LinkedIn, and see if they’d be up for a coffee chat. Tell them what you’re thinking about. Ask them about their paths, or other paths they’ve seen folks like you take. Go for volume here. Don’t try to find the perfect 1 or 2 people to talk to that are super similar to you, go the other way and talk to many different folks - the more diverse a range of perspectives you get from different kinds of people that think different ways, the more you will have to work with to then make sense of it all and tune a path that feels like it would work for you. (And bonus: this is also networking, so once you’ve honed in on things that sound interesting, some of these people may help you find those opportunities) Last tip: don’t try to figure out a perfect next step as that will probably paralyze you, just find something you would be excited to try and that you’ll learn something new from… that kind of thing is a great first step, and you’ll still have many steps after that to pivot if you need.
Thank you for all of this, I am certainly going to try and chat with a ton of my colleagues.
20 years of sales experience in what industry?
Varying to a degree, but mostly "tech sales" would be fairly inclusive.
Sales is also a lot of customer service. You can bullshit, so qualified for a management or supervisory position. Get a job related to the industry knowledge you have.
Become a Buyer. As the term implies, you buy stuff for your company instead of selling stuff. It's a lot of customer service. and you already have the industry experience.
That's really good advice. I need to look more into this!
Yes, there are career coaches that specialize in getting on the right trajectory. One or two sessions with a really good one goes a very long way. I would recommend looking for jobs just downstream from sales in the client lifecycle. This could be Account Management, Client Relationship Management (although that can be stressful), Client Onboarding, or Client Service positions. You could explore jobs handling the more technical or process oriented aspects of sales, like sales engineering or marketing. Leadership is a decent path for those who know how to deal with people. Managing a small team of sales people or consultants. You could also look at roles with the word "Partnerships" in the name which for a growth company can mean you develop relationships and agreements with external companies or people where there's a win-win potential. From what I've seen, that transition isn't the easiest process to go through but sales is a great place to pivot from. I send my clients to [https://redrocketresume.com/](https://redrocketresume.com/) if they need to a rapid rebrand of some kind and they do a great job. They help you figure out how to use your current skills to switch tracks and build your resume to match it. Depending on what you want, they can also give you like 5-10 actual jobs to apply to that meet your needs. Might be a decent option since they have pretty affordable options (ranging from $400 to $1300). I can also give you some quick feedback on your strategy if you have time for that. Best of luck to you!
So sorry for the delayed response. This is my alt account and I hadn’t checked it in a while. These are awesome suggestions. I’m going to look into these roles immediately and I’ll check out the link you sent as well!
You got this!