The Skills Pivot

Burnout, a layoff or a shake-up in your industry can make you want a new field, and a resume written in your old job’s language makes it look like you’d be starting from zero. You’re not. The skills are there; they just need translating.

The Skills Pivot is a 31-page, four-week plan for mid-career career changers. Week 1, you take stock of your tasks, skills, tools and wins, and build a bank of STAR stories. Week 2, you translate them with the free U.S. Department of Labor tools O*NET, mySkills myFuture and the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Week 3, you test your top targets cheaply with job-ad analysis, informational interviews and a small proof project. Week 4, you rewrite your story: a pivot resume summary, translated bullets, a new headline and a confident answer to “Why the change?”

Every figure is checked against official sources and dated, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2025–35 projections and its new AI exposure categories to O*NET’s own search tools. A worked example (teacher to training specialist) shows the whole method with real data, and a “What was checked, and when” table sits up front.

Who it’s for

US mid-career professionals thinking about a new field after burnout, a layoff or industry change, who want to switch without starting over, and test a direction before paying for training.

What’s inside

• Take stock: a four-pass skills inventory, prompts for the skills you forget you have, and a six-story STAR bank.
• Translate: step-by-step O*NET Related Activities and Soft Skills searches, mySkills myFuture, and how to read pay, outlook and entry requirements in ten minutes.
• Test: the 10-ad decode to find the real must-haves, word-for-word informational interview scripts, and proof-project ideas.
• Rewrite and close the gap: resume summary and headline formulas, before-and-after bullets, a 60-second “Why the change?” answer, and when a credential is worth paying for.
• Five printable worksheets and a one-page Quick-Reference Card: Skills Inventory & Story Bank, Translation Table, Target-Role Scorecard, Informational Interview Tracker and Four-Week Plan.

Good to know

• Format: 31-page PDF, US Letter, US edition.
• Delivery: digital download after purchase. Nothing is shipped.
• Printing: print the worksheets as often as your own household needs.
• General information only. Not individual career counseling, legal or financial advice. Pay figures are national medians; for free one-to-one help, visit an American Job Center.