Thinking about switching careers? You’re not alone.
But if you're considering not just a new job, but a completely different industry or function, you may be asking: “Where do I even start?”
The truth is, switching careers isn’t as simple as uploading your resume to a job portal and hoping for the best.
It’s more like playing the popular board game Battleship. Here’s why—and how to use this approach to your advantage.
In Battleship, you have rows and columns.
The objective? To guess where your opponent has a ship.
In your career, there are also rows and columns—except rows are "functions" and columns are "industries.”
Your objective? Figure out which row and column intersection is the best fit for you.
What’s the difference between industries, functions, and roles?
Industries are groups of companies that do a certain thing.
Here are some industries you’re likely familiar with:
- Automotive
- Food & Beverage
- Healthcare
- Investment Banking
- Retail
- Technology
Meanwhile, functions are like departments within a company, such as:
- Customer Service
- Engineering
- Finance & Accounting
- Human Resources (HR)
- Product Management
- Learning & Development (Is this your function? If so, check out my trainings here, used by Fortune 500 companies for workplace readiness and onboarding programs around the world)
Paired together, the actual roles are equivalent to when the industry and function overlap—which are precisely the Battleship slots you are going after. For example:
- Technical Trainer (Automotive)
- HR Manager (Food & Beverage)
- Patient Service Representative (Healthcare)
- Investment Banking Analyst (Finance)
- HR Manager (Retail)
- Clinical Research Coordinator (Pharma)
- Product Manager (Technology)
- IT Analyst (Higher Education)
Looking for job opportunities? If you’re a student or new grad, check out my Early Career Employers list. It’s a curated database of over 1,000 organizations that offer growth opportunities to early career talent.
What is the easiest type of career change to make?
The easiest career move is to stay in the same industry and function. The slightly harder move is to change either your industry or function but keep the other variable the same. The hardest move is to change both industry and function at the same time.
Using our examples from earlier, this would look like:
- Easy: You go from being a clinical research coordinator at one healthcare company to another healthcare company (role change).
- Easy/Medium: You go from being a marketing analyst in technology to a marketing analyst in retail (industry change).
- Medium/Hard: You go from being a financial analyst in technology to a human resources lead in technology (function change).
- Hard: You go from being in food and beverage as a human resources manager to being in transportation as a data scientist (role, industry, and function change).
Making the “hard” move is totally possible. This is what many people go to business school for. But it can be a lot easier if you make your career pivot in more digestible pieces. Why?
Unlike Battleship, you’re not playing against 1 person—you’re playing against countless competitors who likely have experience that you don’t. For every one of you who is making a hard move, many other people are making easier moves.
- For a few quick hacks that will improve your resume, tap here.
- For the interview and workplace scripts that will help you say the right thing, tap here.
- For some Keanu Reeves-inspired networking templates that will help you build relationships, tap here.
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