Now that we’re a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic and things are starting to open up again, you may find yourself itching to get back into a similar job you had before the pandemic…or you may find yourself wanting to enter a whole new field. Knowing how and when to start is often the most challenging part to any new journey.

1. Keep Future-Focused

It’ll be easy to look to the past, or even back to March, and consider all the things that went wrong, or all the things we “could have” done differently. This pandemic not only hurt millions of people financially, but also emotionally, and we can’t try to move forward until we understand and deal with that. And if we want to move forward, we’re going to need to do a bit of reframing. Think about it—this pandemic offers a new opportunity to try something different, to get creative, and refocus your career goals.

2. Reflect on your Career Story

Spend some time reflecting on the different parts of your career so far. Some questions to help facilitate reflection include:

What parts of your career story are you proud of? Not-so-proud of? Want to do again? Never want to do again? Wish you could experience for yourself? What skills have you gained through these experiences? What skills do you wish you had? What did you enjoy most about your previous job? Least? What kind of person do you want to be in 5 years? What kind of skills do you want to develop in order to be this person? 

Take time to reflect on your past career experiences and compare them to your future career goals. These reflection exercises are great to start peeling back the layers of your career story. And, if you find yourself stuck or wanting to piece chapters of your story together in a meaningful way, Bridging Harts is here for you, too! Remember to use your resources and support structures in order to achieve the life you want.

3. Validate your Emotions

The past few months have be TOUGH. And how can we possibly make our futures look better if we don’t let ourselves sit with the fact that the last few months was hard? Name these emotions that come up for you. The world has been through a lot, and understanding the emotional toll that takes on a person is the starting point to moving through that emotion.

4. Re-Evaluate your Career

We’ve been given a unique chance to re-evaluate our careers, and reflect on the trajectory of our current career paths. Are you starting to realize you weren’t as happy in your last job as you were telling yourself you were? Do you see your future laid out in front of you and want to change? Do you see things you could be doing more or less of? Take the time to evaluate you career story and outline new chapters to put in! Taking this time out to evaluate is crucial.

5. Begin Your Job Search

You’re not truly starting at level 0. You have more resources and connections than meets the eye. Try starting here: What titles interest you? What titles make you want to learn more about the position? Who do you want to speak with? Who’s job makes you excited? Begin compiling a list of people to interview to learn more about their position and how they got the career they have. Invest in these relationships now! Have a Zoom call, set up monthly meetings, do things that cultivate these new relationships!

6. NETWORK!

You’ve heard it before and you’re hearing it now, but networking is how jobs are made and received these days. Don’t let it intimidate you though—start by using the connections you already have in your contact list! Once you’ve identified jobs that sound interesting to you, cast your net! Ask friends if they know of anyone with a similar job title, position, or someone involved in a company you have your eyes on. Use LinkedIn to identify people in the positions you want one day. It doesn't hurt to ask to hear someone's story. Chances are, people WANT to share with you!

Good luck, and remember…  

You got this.