When I was in film school, one piece of advice from a screenwriting class stuck with me: a qualification is just a piece of paper; the thing that gets you the life you want is honing your skills and how you put yourself out there. That means if the job you want doesn't exist, figure out the steps it might take to create it.

For me, each time I took a career pivot (sometimes accidentally), it felt like both a risk and a brilliant escape plan. Risky because I was walking away from an industry I'd spent years practising to work in. An escape plan because staying put felt like giving up. It's OK if your career pivots don't "make sense" on paper. I've worked in film production, venue operations and customer support, and right now I interview creative people about how they actually work. Where will I be in five years? I'll let you know when I get there. At some point, the pattern of reinvention became the career itself.

THINK IN ADJACENTS Total career 180s sound romantic, but adjacent moves are what actually worked for me. Going from filmmaking to arts organisation operations made sense – I understood how ideas got made, but wanted to better understand programming decisions, audience development and making live events possible. Customer support translated to interviewing creative people and helping people get unstuck when they couldn’t find the words. I knew enough not to feel totally lost, but I was learning something genuinely new. There was just enough mystery to keep things interesting and feel like I'd never run out of stuff to learn.

TRANSFERABLE SKILLS ARE WORTH MORE THAN YOU THINK It can be intimidating to pivot into industries where you don't know anyone. You spiral into, “Who cares what I think? Why would people want to give me their time?” But a lot of my early jobs came from cold pitches – shooting my shot without connections. What got me opportunities wasn't credentials, it was soft skills other people overlooked, like how to write a brief that sets someone else up for success, being genuinely interested in people's experiences, and listening carefully. Those mattered more than technical mastery.

DON'T FALL FOR THE "GOOD TO BE BUSY" TRAP When new opportunities started arriving unannounced, I thought being in demand meant I had to say yes to as much as possible because every request presented something I hadn’t done before. Multiple deadlines in a week felt like evidence that people had ideas about what I was good at, without needing an elevator pitch to be won over.

And to be fair, I did need to say yes to everything at first. You need data points – you discover what energises you, what drains you, what you're surprisingly good at. Each yes that works out proves you can do things you weren't sure about. But being selective actually taught people to value my work more. When you're always the default last-minute hero or problem-solver, people grow to expect it. When you show that your time is valuable, people respect it – and pay attention when you do say yes. Some people say yes because they're building a portfolio on their own terms. Others say yes because they need the structure of a role where someone else defines what good work looks like. There's no right choice, but you learn either way. What's right for you isn't a decision you can outsource to someone who doesn't understand where you want to go next.

YOUR "WEIRD" SKILLS BECOME YOUR STRENGTHS Eventually, a CV that made people think you were unfocused or a risky investment becomes exactly why they hire you. Think of your work experience as a constellation, not one star. A single star is bright, but it’s just one point of light. A constellation has shape, narrative and meaning. You need multiple points to connect together and see the bigger pattern. For example, I didn't need to be the best at something to interview people who are. I bombed accounting classes in high school, but years later got commissioned to interview entrepreneurs and accountants about tricky topics like financial literacy and business continuity because I could ask the questions a beginner would ask; the ones everyone's too embarrassed to admit they don't know. Curiosity matters more than being the expert in the room.

IF YOU'RE THINKING ABOUT A PIVOT Here are three questions that helped me work out the smallest possible next steps. First: What skills from my previous work actually give me energy, and which ones feel like baggage? Second: Who do I know that's already doing something I'm curious about? And third: What's the smallest version of this career pivot I could test right now?    

THE LONG GAME Each pivot let me activate different dimensions of myself – the analytical side, the creative side, the people-y side – instead of using up one muscle while the others got rusty. The caring years, the work that kept the lights on and the re-skilling periods aren't gaps or blemishes in a career – they’re the kind of things that shape you. They teach you something essential. They're part of who you’ll become. Each time you successfully change direction, you prove to yourself that you're not stuck and can shape your own path. The pivot isn't a failure – it's how you keep showing up.

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