There’s no denying the current economic situation is frustrating for anyone navigating a career pivot. We’re forced to change our methods (which were challenging even before COVID-19!) for job seeking.

How do we adapt to this new reality and how can you still make progress navigating your next career move?

Yesterday I shared how to use empathy to move your job search forward. Today’s post concentrates on the second ingredient we need to add to job searching during COVID-19: curiosity. 

It’s time to create some new options and get curious about them.

First, check out the industries that are hiring. Technology, healthcare, logistics, and more are actively hiring to keep up with demand precipitated by the crisis. (Additionally, here’s a helpful resource to see what companies are hiring or have instituted hiring freezes or layoffs.)

Now is a great time to do a skills inventory or revisit your StrengthsFinder results and think about how you could apply your talents in other ways you might not have thought about.

For example, if you’ve got lots of executing talents, you might be a great fit for logistics-heavy positions or companies that are hiring now. If you’ve got lots of relationship building skills, you might look into tech companies that value putting customer experiences first. Or, if you love winning others over and communicating, you might look at new fundraising roles that have been created to raise money for various causes right now.

What does this look like in action?

A current coaching client, Courtney, got curious and tried imagining how her skills could be useful in an entirely different and unrelated field. She’s currently a buyer for a big fashion retailer where she oversees store planning, operations, and logistics. She optimizes inventory, tracking 1000+ SKUs, and analyzes performance to shift procurement strategies. We identified that if she can do this for handbags and dresses, she can do it in other industries.

She came across a position with FEMA that would allow her to use those same skills but in a totally different context, and on the front lines of this crisis. As I type this, she’s reworking her resume to translate prior fashion-heavy positions for a different audience.

If you’re like Courtney and are curious to dive deeper and unpack your unique strengths to think about where you could take them next, our Career Mapping Workshop is for you.

If there’s one silver lining in having to slow your job search, it’s that curiosity and creativity flourish when the habits and patterns of “your normal day” are disrupted.

Many of us have seen the references to Shakespeare writing King Lear in quarantine, and recent graduate Isaac Newton’s breakthroughs on a variety of subjects including calculus during the Great Plague of London. While you shouldn’t expect to invent a whole new branch of math over the next few months, now is the time the time to think bigger or differently.

Design thinking is a process to help you think bigger, and get creative, better results.

It’s all about understanding what you’re trying to solve for and coming up with many ideas and then prototyping (testing) them.

For more on using design thinking in your career, read this.

So how to you ideate and test our your ideas when you are in isolation and it feels like the world is on hold?

Luckily our inboxes and social media feeds are overflowing with ideas of how to engage in the world and learn.

Here are three ways to implement your curiosity and test out new ideas:

1) There are awesome skill-building courses from universities and companies that allow you to dip your toe into subjects you don’t already know a lot about.

Looking to pivot into a more creative field or role?

• See if your favorite artist or writer is hosting events or training online. Often this is posted on social media, so now might be the time to curate a list of experts in your field to follow.

• Skillshare offers a free 2-month trial with unlimited access to all kinds of classes for creatives like painting, photography, graphic design, marketing, and more.

 Curious about a career in data analysis or coding?

• Check out local universities and sources like Udacity and Coursera.

• Ivy League schools have 450 courses you can take online right now for free in areas including Computer Science, and Data Science (in addition to: Programming, Humanities, Business, Art & Design, Social Sciences, Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, Mathematics, Education & Teaching, and Personal Development)

• Get a free month trial from LinkedIn Learning and get access to tons of hour-long content.

2) Now you can attend events you might never have been able to attend during normal times – they’ve migrated online and many have become more open and free.

• Tech conferences have moved online and are now free to attend.

• LMHQ, one of our favorite social impact conveners in NYC, has a variety of programs now available online (plus a helpful guide to other resources).

• Many Meetup groups are now convening online.

3) Your networking conversations can get into topics that might never have come up during regular times – yes, they’ll all have to be remote, but with some minor shifts you can make the most out of each conversation.

You might talk to people who do things that are wildly different than what you do right now. If ever there was a time to explore something really new, it’s now – and most people will respect that and might be doing it themselves!

Instead of asking someone how they made a move to a different industry, you might ask them why. And their answer might lead you to ask other questions that broaden your mind to other possibilities instead of just trying to secure a new position doing what they do.

Looking for other great questions to help you understand a new industry or role? Check out this list.  

While networking may be slowing down a little due to other demands on people’s time (hello full time work and daycare for many!), people are still happy to connect with others and are doing so.

Not sure what you’d actually gain from any of these? Give it a shot. You never know what you might find.

Here’s an email I got from a client last week:

“I took a few General Assembly free live streams this week on digital marketing, UX design and coding. Today I did the coding where we got to do some live exercises remotely (great prototyping!) - I LOVED IT. I never thought it would be something I’d be interested in, I was just trying to get some background, but it was really satisfying and I can see how it could be really creative. I am going to look at the next level of classes they have in some of these areas to see what I may want to pursue next.

This is curiosity in action, and there’s never been a better moment to harness it towards exploration and learning.

We’ll be sharing more with you over the coming weeks on retooling your networking strategies. For now, the world is changing. New opportunities and situations arise through change. Get curious.