Adapt!

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses what to do when a company makes a change to the schedule.

I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. I’m the head coach for JobSearch.Community

And I want to use myself as an example for the notion of adapting, changing, and pivoting, and tell a story of my own professional career and life.

You know, when I got out of college back in the Stone Ages, you know, I was walking out with my club, readying, readying to slay animals—that’s how long ago it was—I graduated with no real relevant skills and found the one job that was open to me: being a recruiter.

And in being a recruiter, I had no special skills. I had an undergraduate degree in political science, and went to work for a firm for a year and a half, with a partner started a business, after a number of years divorced him, started my first business. I wound up, I think it was at that point, I went to work for someone.

No, let me go back. So, I worked for a year and a half, started a business with a partner, started my first business, and then a second name, and then went to work for two different firms for like 15, 16 years before going out into recruiting again and then coaching. That’s the quick summary of a lot of years.

Now, along the way, I realized a number of things about myself, and one was I don’t really like recruiting all that much. Yeah, I liked the activity, and that was part of what I really thrived at. I loved the deal, I loved the successes, but the frustrations were incredible. But I did it because that’s what I thought I could do, and the money was great, but, you know, I really wasn‘t all that into doing it after a while.

So, from experiences that I developed with men’s groups, I got the idea of becoming a therapist in private practice, getting a master’s, and then had the great fortune to meet my wife in graduate school. And with that, made a very clear decision to put my career change on hold because we wanted to do the house, the kid, the whole thing. And, you know, I put it aside and waited, and then came back to it a number of years later in order to make a transition into coaching.

I share this story because, frankly, there are times where you’re going to want to do something, and it’s not going to be the right time, and you’re just going to have to adapt. Now, adapting takes a lot of different forms. So, for example, I went for a master’s, and in doing so, I got a certain type of training that was really very helpful to me both in what I was hoping my career would be, which would be a therapist in private practice, and the way I adapted it, it was very effective for me as a headhunter. And even when I put my career change on hold, it was great for my relationship with my wife, who I’d met there, became a way that we could talk, that we had a common bond from that experience. We did psychoanalytic training together for a number of years, we each practiced, etc., etc., before I went into coaching.

Sometimes you need to adapt to circumstances because they change, and you could criticize yourself, “Oh, I didn’t do it what I wanted to,” and punish yourself, but it’s not really useful. What I think you’re just better off doing is waiting for the right time and then making your pivot—to take the skills that you have to move in a different direction.

For example, one of the things that I‘ve done in my coaching is become an executive job search coach, which takes my experience from search work and allows me to work as an ally to a senior job hunter and help them reposition themselves to the next organization. Being clear, I’m not functioning as a recruiter; I am their coach, helping them navigate between all these different directions that they have to contend with, answering their questions, translating circumstances. And my background in search comes in remarkably helpful. And that becomes an—excuse me, I kind of jumped around there—that becomes a great pivot point for me in using my knowledge and experiences in a very different way. Because I don’t know of any little boy or girl who grows up and says, “I want to do executive job search coaching.” No one does that, do they? But from the experiences that I have, I’ve been able to create something very different that’s effective.

You can do your version of it. But I think the key element here is having the patience to sort it out, and then the courage to take the leap. As I’ve said in another video, it all starts with courage. The courage to make the change that’s necessary to have the life that you want. It starts there. And being true to yourself, being of service to others, and in a variety—well, I’ll get to some of the other things later on. But when all is said and done, I want to encourage you to go out there, start looking at ways that you can make changes. Don’t rush unless you feel you’re already and you got it all lined up in your mind, and you’ve researched it. And even then, it might be useful for you to get some coaching to go through some of the situations that might turn out as roadblocks along the way.

I’d love to help you. Reach out to me at JeffAltman@TheBigGameHunter.us. In the subject line, put the word “coaching,” and we’ll figure out a time to speak.

Have a great day. Take care.

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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER

People hire Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter to provide No BS job search coaching and career advice globally because he makes job search and succeeding in your career easier. 

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You will find great info and job search coaching to help with your job search at ⁠⁠JobSearch.Community⁠⁠ 

Connect on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/T⁠⁠heBigGameHunter⁠ 

Schedule a discovery call to speak with me about one-on-one or group coaching during your job search at ⁠www.TheBigGameHunter.us. 

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He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 3000 episodes over 13+ years.

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