Can’t Find Your Target Job? Get an Interim Job
Many of my clients have struggled over the past year to land their job of choice, due to a lack of specific experience, a dearth of opportunities in their field or prospective field, or failure to spread the net wide enough.
What I find is that client desires and the needs of the market don’t always align.
In a tighter job market, companies are more able to attract their ideal talent – essentially, someone who does not require a great deal of training or even onboarding. They can write a job description that asks for candidates with very specific experience, and they will more easily attract those people.
This makes it tough for job seekers presenting 70% of what’s requested when employers are seeing plenty of candidates who can match the job description almost exactly.
So what’s the solution for the 70 percenters?
An interim job. What’s an interim job? It’s the job you take on the way to your target job.
The interim job is strategic, designed to get you where you want to go, but with an additional step. It may get you into your ideal organization, but you may have to make a lateral move later, or you may need to work hard to establish the right contacts to get you promoted from a satellite office to headquarters. It may mean returning to the company you left to go to grad school, in a more senior role with more pay and a more explicit track defined by you.
It may not be the exact job you’re envisioning for yourself. You may feel deflated since it’s not a big, audacious step. It may feel like you’re settling when you’re actually being strategic. Be patient – careers should be built for the long term.
Need some examples of how this can be done? Here are three profiles from my practice and my recommendations, with details disguised for privacy.
Project to Product Manager
Rob worked for a fintech startup for five years, wearing many hats and rising to oversee product development and management. His goal? To join a new company as a Product Manager. In principle, this seems realistic. In practice, however, tech companies are just now beginning to stabilize after more than a year of layoffs following record post-pandemic hiring. There are simply not as many PM jobs out there for someone like Rob whose experience is more diffuse. So what’s the best way forward?
I suggested to Rob that he lean on his project management experience, since Project Managers are infinitely hirable and are tangential to Product Managers. In his new job he should work on getting closer to the product teams and pitch himself cross-functionally to get experience internally.
Consulting, with an Eye on Tech
Matthew had a liberal arts education followed by five years at a niche strategy consulting firm. While he loved his work, he lacked hard business skills like finance and accounting, as well as a holistic view of how businesses operate. During his one-year MBA, he got a product management internship and then applied to PM jobs, but like Rob’s experience, he landed very few interviews. Instead upon graduation, he returned to his consulting firm with the understanding that he’d be promoted and put forth for more tech-focused roles. Now a year later, he’s made contacts at specific companies of interest and is poised to make a move in 2025.
Tech Support as a Bridge to Cybersecurity
Kevin had an undergraduate degree in computer science and during Covid, went straight through to a master’s program in cybersecurity. When he came to me he was sure he wanted a career in cybersecurity but had little to showcase outside of a few school projects and internships in IT support. He had been applying to cybersecurity jobs for close to a year but lacked the entry-level requirements.
So we devised a long-term plan. He would choose companies with cybersecurity analysts on staff but would apply for jobs in broader IT support. After a couple of months he was hired by a large hospital system as a technical support specialist. His goal is to make an internal move to cybersecurity and he’s already speaking with colleagues in that department to help shepherd his move.
If I can help you launch, develop, or change your career, I hope you’ll reach out.