career transition Archives • Bitches Get Riches

Season 3, Episode 10: “I Want to Break Into a New Field. How Do I Make Employers See Past My Lack of Direct Experience?”

December 16, 2021August 2, 2022 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") Leave a comment

We, your humble Bitches, are experts in many topics. How to horrifically fuck up one’s finances, for example! We’ve got hands-on experience with that one, and we aren’t afraid to announce it to an auditorium full of people.

Today we’d like to direct your attention to another area of our hands-on expertise: career transitions. Citizens of Bitch Nation will recall that I transitioned from a career in publishing to one in finance early this year. Certainly not as dramatic as some people’s transitions, but it was still a big deal. I had to figure out how to reframe my existing skill set and experience so it would apply outside of my original industry. And I had to let go of the idea that my career defined me. Scary stuff.

Fortunately, I had prepared for my career transition by setting up a second income stream through my side hustle—this very ~~Chris Dane Owens fan site~~ personal finance blog! And that gave me a huge advantage before I attempted to reforge myself in the fires of a career transition.

For my next career transition, I'm going to be Chris Dane Owens.

Listen to this week’s brand new podcast episode to find out how to identify transferrable skills, translate your experience into the language of a new career, and reinvent your professional worksona! We even kinda know what we’re talking about with this one!

My Career Transition Succeeded When I Gave Fewer Fucks, Made More Friends, and Had More Fun

March 23, 2021March 6, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 38 Comments

CAREER TRANSITION SUCCESSFUL: THIS BITCH IS EMPLOYED!

As our Patreon community already knows, I, your humble Bitch Piggy, have a shiny new job! This life update comes in the wake of being laid off from a large publishing house a year ago. (You can read about the painful details of that identity-crisis-cum-career-bellyflop here.) Since then, I’ve been rocking the self-employed life as an editorial consultant, literary agent, and blogger. The hustle, my friends. The hustle.

But now I’m very proud to announce I’ve joined the editorial team at The Motley Fool. Maybe you’ve heard of it? I’m the new managing editor for distribution acquisitions. Mostly that means that instead of wrangling book authors for a living, I’m going to be wrangling money writers.

Switching from a career in book publishing to one in financial media was no easy feat! But it did feel a helluva lot like destiny. Here’s how I made the career transition.

S2 E11: "I tripped and fell into a career I don't like. How do I reinvent myself?"

Season 2, Episode 11: “I Tripped and Fell into a Career I Don’t like. How Do I Reinvent Myself?”

September 18, 2020October 27, 2021 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 3 Comments

If you’re new here, let me get you up to speed: personal finance is personal. And as a result, it’s also often complicated—a Choose Your Own Adventure with multiple right answers and mitigating circumstances.

Which is why it is so easy to feel stuck in your career or financial journey. What do you do when you’re just fine… but you want more? How do you overcome crippling stagnation? How do you justify leaving the safety of your established, safe career… and risk everything to leap headlong toward your dreams?

Alternatively: when is the safe and not-super-fulfilling job sometimes exactly what you need? What could you do with the excess creative mental energy that a boring day job affords?

All these questions (and much talk of Spiderman!) on this week’s episode.

I Lost My Job and It Might Be the Best Worst Thing That’s Ever Happened to Me

July 7, 2020January 9, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 55 Comments

Two years ago I was celebrating leaving my job of nearly nine years at a nonprofit publishing house and finally going corporate. I was riding high and making more money at a large, for-profit publishing house, working remotely full-time and generally kicking ass. It was the shit. Aaaaand then I lost my job.

Sad trombone.

Kitty dropped the news during our coronavirus article blitz. And I’m honestly glad she did, because it saved me the struggle of deciding to pull the trigger on telling you all. For some reason I’ve been too… ashamed? Embarrassed? Afraid? Feeling hypocritical? Emotionally stunted???

There’s a reason it’s taken me a few months to write this article, even if I don’t yet understand what that reason is. Clearly I have a lot of thoughts and feelings to process about how I lost my job. So let’s get with the processing.