Publishing: A Career-Switcher’s Secret Weapon
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Career switching is painful. The experiences and knowledge that once made you desirable to hiring managers now make them skeptical of your value. If you’re over 27 in Silicon Valley, many employers will expect an explanation for why they should hire you today vs. you five years ago. Typically your resume is no help as the person reading it can’t put your accomplishments in context. Rather than trying to, it’s easier for them to skip to a CV that makes more sense.
But you didn’t leave your old job because you thought the switch would be easy. You left because you wanted to find work that fills you with purpose and pushes you to strive for mastery. Fortunately, there’s a better way to contextualize your past experiences so hiring managers will understand your transferrable skills: publishing.
During my time at Tradecraft I’ve worked with hundreds of career switchers. Some attempting relatively easy transitions, like leveling up an existing skill-set. Others attempting much harder ones, like switching industry and function at the same time. Either way, I’ve seen time and again how a great post can contextualize past experience, get a particular company excited, or establish credibility in a specific domain.
A thoughtful post can demonstrate to an employer:
- Your subject matter expertise
- The relevance of your past experience
- Clarity of thought and communication
- Drive and determination
- Social Proof
So, how do you do it?
A 6-step publishing guide for career switchers:
To make this a bit more concrete, let’s imagine you’re a recovering accountant looking to move into an entry-level Growth Marketing role at a mid-stage consumer startup.
Step 1. Identify your target audience
Start by collecting a few job postings that you’re excited about. Find 3 or 4 with relatively similar titles. Ideally the companies should share a sector or stage (eg. Ed-tech, Mid-stage), so that you can get some consistency. Don’t freak out when you read the requirement explaining that you need 2 years experience doing the role at another company. Most hiring managers care more about bringing smart motivated people onto their team than candidates who check every single box.
Here are three roles I found on AngelList that look like good fits (note these roles may not be available by the time you’re reading this):
Now, you may want to do some Linkedin-sleuthing to find the hiring managers for each of these roles. If you’re looking at mid-stage startups, try the head of that group (eg. head of growth, director of design). If you’re looking at early-stage startups, try the founder.
Having these profiles will help you envision your ideal readers and get a sense of what might resonate with them.
Step 2. Discover your readers’ real problems
Now that you know who you’re writing for, return to the job postings that you collected. As you review them answer the following questions:
- What challenges are theses companies facing that’s causing them to hire for this role? How does the hiring manager (aka my reader) feel this pain?
- What responsibilities are mentioned more than once across these job descriptions? What are the keywords repeated?
- What knowledge and skills are necessary to meet these responsibilities?
- How do the responsibilities of these roles translate to my past work experience? Where can I draw a connection?
Reading through the three AngelList job postings, here are some phrases that stood out as potential topics for a great post:
“Report on site performance and identify areas to optimize and execute A/B tests.”
“Develop a customer segmentation model using disparate data points, with the ultimate goal of delivering tailored customer journeys for each of our many distinct customer segments.”
“Analyze, measure and report on key performance indicators, particularly CPA, which tie to overall business objectives.”
Step 3. Pick a problem and research it
Hopefully at this point you’ve been able to identify 3 or 4 potential pain points that your future hiring manager might be trying to solve by hiring this role. Your post doesn’t need to solve all of them. Instead, it should do a good job of solving one of them.
Based on the insights from the Angellist job posts here are some topics you might consider:
Optimizing conversion through A/B testing new consumer offerings
Customer journey mapping and implementation of insights
How to optimize your marketing spend and lower your CPA
Your first priority should be to connect your post to something important to the role (since that’s what matters most to your employer). If there’s a way to tie insights from your previous job to the topic, all the better, but no need to hit your reader over the head with it.
Once you’ve selected your topic, you’ll want to research and think deeply about the topic. If the answers don’t come easily, you’ll want to read a lot and find experts on the topic who you can learn from.
Step 4. Craft your post
Your goal is to create the MVP or minimum viable product of working with you. Just as an MVP needs enough features to solve a customer’s problem and convey the product’s value, your post should contain enough knowledge that it solves your a reader’s problem and conveys your value as a potential hire.
Your post should contain enough knowledge that it solves your readers’ problem and conveys your value as a potential hire.
As you write, don’t overwhelm the reader with information. Instead, structure your post so that the reader can easily digest it. Step by step guides (like this one) tend to be a good format. You can also create a case study and attempt to solve a problem for a specific company that excites you. Interviewing experts about best practices also can be a good way to learn about a topic and lend your post credibility. However you write it, just make sure that once your readers are finished with your post they can accomplish something that they couldn’t before.
Step 5. Edit
Your first draft will probably be bad (mine always are). Get someone you trust to read it over and give you honest feedback. Since your future employer will be reading your work, make sure it’s well written.
Step 6. Publish and Distribute
Writing your post is only half the battle. If you don’t distribute it, no one will ever read it. As a good rule of thumb: for every hour you spend writing your post, plan to spend 2–4 hours on distribution.
As a good rule of thumb: for every hour you spend writing your post, plan to spend 2–4 hours on distribution.
You’ll want to push it to as large of an audience as possible in order to open yourself up to potential opportunities and give your ideas social proof. At the same time you may also want to target individual readers like the ones you identified in step 1.
Some good places to distribute your post include:
- Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn
- Getting added to a well-regarded Medium publication with a wide audience
- Industry specific link sharing sites like: Hacker News, Designer News, Growth Hackers, or specific Reddit communities
- Emailing people in your network and asking them to share
- Relevant Facebook or Slack groups
- Popular industry email lists like Mattermark Daily or Sidebar (to do this you’ll usually need to impress the editor with the quality of your content)
- Cold emailing people with large and relevant followings
Troubleshooting
There’s a good chance that your first post might not lead to a lot of interest from potential employers. That’s okay. Keep at it. As you continue to post, you’ll improve your writing, build your knowledge about the subject, and grow your audience.
Your post may be more helpful later in the interview process when you’re already in direct contact with potential employers as something to accompany your resume.
While I wouldn’t completely rely on publishing in lieu of other important levers like building skills and relationships, I tend to see a high correlation between those who consistently publish well-researched and helpful posts and those who get great outcomes.
At Tradecraft we’ve helped a few hundred people transition into fast-growing startups like Facebook, Uber, Medium, Udemy, Doordash etc. If you’re serious about making this your career path and you want hands-on help with tactics & execution, drop us a line.
