Quitting Smarter: Lessons from a Bold Career Pivot

The conventional wisdom says you should never quit a job without having another one lined up. Hannah Zhang learned that lesson the hard way. After landing what she thought was her dream job in investment banking at Morgan Stanley, it took just one month for her to realize the 80-100 hour weeks and rigid hierarchy weren't for her. So she quit with no plan, no backup and right at the start of the 2020 pandemic.

What followed was a challenging but ultimately transformative journey that taught her everything about how NOT to make a career pivot and eventually, how to do it right. Hannah, now a successful product marketer and content creator, joined LinkedIn News Editor Andrew Seaman on the latest episode of Get Hired to share the costly mistakes she made and the strategic approach she developed to successfully transition into tech.

Get Hannah's complete playbook for strategic career pivoting on the episode above or in the transcript below. Find the show on your favorite podcast platform by clicking here.

TRANSCRIPT - Quitting Smarter: Lessons from a Bold Career Pivot

Andrew Seaman: We've all had those days at work, the ones where you catch yourself fantasizing about slamming your laptop shut and walking away forever. If you're stuck in the wrong job, that daydream might be a daily occurrence. But don't throw in the towel or fire off an angry email to your boss just yet. You'll want to hear today's episode first. That's because my guest is sharing a real life story of quitting cold turkey and the mistakes they made along the way. That's coming up right after the short break.

From LinkedIn News, this is Get Hired, a podcast for the ups and downs and the ever-changing landscape of our professional lives. I'm your host, Andrew Seaman, LinkedIn's editor at large for jobs and career development, bringing new conversations with experts who, like me, want to see you succeed at work, at home, and everywhere in between.

My guest today is Hannah Zhang, a product marketer and content creator. After landing her dream job in investment banking, it took just one month for Hannah to realize it wasn't the right fit. In early 2020, she quit her six figure role with no plan, launching herself into unemployment, uncertainty, and a global pandemic all at once. Eventually, Hannah found her way into the tech and startup world as a product marketer.

Now she creates content and mentors others on how to do the same. Today she's sharing the story of her career pivot, the missteps, lessons, and strategies she's learned along the way so you don't have to make the same mistakes. I started by asking how she turned her own career pivot into a platform for helping others.

Hannah Zhang: In college, my dream was to be an investment banker because I saw so many people around me doing that. There was such a halo of prestige around it. I didn't get my dream investment banking internship. In fact, I got rejected to almost all of them. Ended up getting an internship in sales and trading, doing that at Morgan Stanley. Turns out I loved that, but still had that dream of being an investment banking in the back of my mind.

So I worked really hard to actually pivot internally within Morgan Stanley. Went into investment banking, really got that dream job and was probably on top of the world for a month, and then realized, wow, this is really not what I expected. I'd heard about the 80, 100 hour weeks that people work in that industry, but it was that. And worse, it was the hierarchy. I didn't have the autonomy.

And just realizing that, well, I really needed to make a change and just quit without a plan. I felt so lost and confused and eventually found my way into working in tech and startups. And it definitely didn't happen in a day like I'm describing it now. And starting last year, I figured there was a lot that I could share. And funny enough, it actually started all with a LinkedIn post.

Because I thought throughout my journey, so many people had helped me along the way that I wanted to pay that forward. So I made a LinkedIn post essentially detailing my journey and saying, "Hey, you can book a 20-minute call with me. We'll go over some of the stuff that you're struggling with. I'll help you with it."

And I had a lot of people stuck in careers like banking, consulting, professional services, who wanted to learn about how I made that pivot, that I realized what was a way I can scale that and bring it to a bigger audience. And that's really why I started creating content. That really was the genesis of all of it.

Andrew: Really interesting. And also, I really like the emphasis, like you said, it didn't happen overnight because I think so many people when they want to make a career pivot or really any change in their career, there is that idea of urgency. Obviously because money's tied to it, your livelihoods tied to it, but they forget to factor in that because they think it's like, okay, I'm going to put out resumes and I'm going to go on interviews.

And all of a sudden, I'm just going to show up and get a new career. And it does take time. For you, how did you start making that happen? Because I know in your case, you quit right away. And do you recommend other people do that?

Hannah: No, I really don't. If there's one thing I could go back in time and do, it's just really tell myself to see the bigger picture and realize that quitting something cold turkey, it doesn't solve the problem. In fact, after I quit immediately, for sure, I felt relief. I felt a lack of the exhaustion that had overwhelmed me for months and months. But really quickly, I also felt really insecure and just like I was incompetent because I couldn't hack that job, I couldn't survive it, and just really lost and confused.

And I wish I had taken time with the job security to really think about what my next step was from the perspective of what am I actually interested in, and to really figure out where that intersected with my strengths and my superpowers and find something that was really aligned to that. So no, I don't recommend that people quit cold turkey, unless you're able to take a plan break or a sabbatical or something of that sort. I don't think quitting cold turkey is the right thing to do.

Andrew: Yeah, or even if you are going to quit without something else lined up, you still want to maybe put some pieces in place so you're like, "Okay, this is what I'm going to do. This is what I'm going to do on day one," just so that it's not a complete unknown, right?

Hannah: Yeah, 100%.

Andrew: How did you get employers to take a chance on you to be like, "Oh, why did you quit so abruptly?" Because sometimes people are concerned, "I don't have a job now." And there could be a lot of people listening who they were laid off, or maybe they quit abruptly, or they're trying to get back into the workforce. How was that for you and how do you suggest people overcome that?

Hannah: Yeah. I mean, for context since I think it's important, I was job searching when I quit investment banking in March 2020. That was not a great time to be job searching at all.

Andrew: Things were happening.

Hannah: Yeah. One thing that really helps is just to find what positioning suits you best and really figure out your story for why you took the time off and what you're looking to do next. Because I think there is intentionality to saying I took some time off with the purpose of figuring out what I wanted to do next, and just being really clear about why you want to make a shift.

And in my case, I was also switching geographies. I actually started off my career in banking in Hong Kong. So part of my story, and you have to tweak it a little bit, is just to say that I wanted to move back to the US or just leave Hong Kong, honestly. And I think part of that helped in terms of helping just the employer understand, okay, this is a mindful decision you made to then make a pivot.

And the other thing I was really clear about doing is just saying whenever that question came up in interviews, I was also very intentional about here are the ways that I took a SQL course. I did these certifications on LinkedIn, on Udemy, or just any of those platforms where I'm really building up to this pivot. I'm trying to transition into tech, learn more about tech, and this is how I used this time productively.

Andrew: Yeah, no, I think that's such a smart strategy and especially the lead with honesty part because you're going to be interviewing, you're going to be talking to humans, and they have a life that gets in the way of their jobs sometimes, they can empathize with that. And I think that's so much more honest and human than trying to overly complicate it.

And especially the part about I put in the work and I found out what I want to do, and I think that is so powerful. I guess then that experience though working in finance and, like you said, the 80 plus hours a week and navigating all of that, it also taught you what you didn't want then, I assume, right?

Hannah: Yeah, that was so valuable. I guess maybe my hot take for people early on in their careers, especially those who consider themselves overachievers, high performers, work that crazy job, work that insane job that's 80, 100 hours a week. If you have that in you and you think, I really want that, there's something in you that... Even if it's just like, I really want the prestige, I really want the exit opportunities, you have to do it because that is the only way to silence that voice in your mind.

And from that, I learned so much about what I liked and what I didn't like. I learned that I actually don't mind working hard when it's something I'm super driven and passionate about. It was more so that I was working on things that wouldn't come to fruition. I was working on a pitch deck for a project that was going to fall apart or something that was already perfect at turning the 10th version of it.

I see you laughing because I feel like that's a common experience for a lot of folks in the workplace. Maybe you're doing it at 4:00 PM. Maybe you're doing it at 4:00 AM. When I talk to people about how to do a career pivot, I frame this as rediscovering and reconnecting with your interests, because sometimes it just requires time by yourself and time away from that environment for things to become clear to you.

And then some of the things I really recommend is just going through and whether it's looking at your resume or just thinking through what are the top projects I did at work, just go through and figure out, I like doing this, I didn't like doing that. And thinking about your biggest achievements, like why do those things feel so good versus things you felt like were low points. What really about that bothered you? And some of this is a little bit therapy-esque and that can certainly help with the process too.

Andrew: And also sometimes it's uncomfortable to do because you're sitting down and you're admitting, okay, I'm not great at this, but it's worth that amount of discomfort to get to that other side. And for you, once you did that, how did you figure out what that next thing was?

Hannah: Yeah. It was a lot of trial and error for me. I just had an approach, which I don't know that I recommend to people knowing what I know now, and I just applied to different jobs. I think what's not good about doing that, and this is very much me learning from and recounting my own mistakes for the benefit of others, is then you're much more likely to look at the fancy job titles and be like, "I could do that. I could do partnerships at LinkedIn and that would be great," but it's not the reality.

That was part of the approach that I took and eventually something stuck. But my counterintuitive advice for job applications, which I'm sure you agree with, you work at LinkedIn, I'm sure you've applied to a lot of jobs, is sometimes you get more jobs by applying to fewer jobs.

Andrew: Yeah.

Hannah: And that's because you have such granular clarity on what exactly you want to do. Of course, you're going to start broad, but eventually after really reflecting upon your interests, strengths, values, all of those things, you should come up with something that sounds like a mission statement for your job search. And that's something like, I am interested in being a FinTech product manager at a startup in New York.

Something so specific like that where there might only be a dozen or so, well, maybe 50 or 100 companies that fit that job description. But then you have one resume, you have one interview prep process, everything you do is gearing towards that. And so with every application, with every interview, you get better and better, until you're just so tailored that a hiring manager looks at your resume and says, "Wow, this person is a perfect fit for this."

You don't have to be dispersing all of your efforts across 10 different jobs and not doing well and not fitting your message to any of them. I'm a product marketer in my day job. And so I think about this as positioning yourself. It's almost like positioning yourself like a product.

Andrew: Yeah, I really do resonate with that because so many people, I think they get stuck in a vicious cycle of apply to anything. When you apply to anything with a very general resume, you get very few responses, but then your solution for that is to double down and then send even more general resumes and application. So it just becomes this vicious cycle.

Whereas if you take the time and say, "Okay, I'm going to take a week or so to figure out who I am and what I want, and then I'm going to go for this." And then as you go through the process, like you said, you look at the job description and say, "No, this isn't for me. This isn't for me," and you get that narrow lane. And I think that's where people will find the most success probably.

Hannah: 100%.

Andrew: We'll be right back with Hannah Zhang.

Andrew: And we're back with product marketer Hannah Zhang. When you're job searching or making a major pivot, it can be incredibly lonely. Did you have a community around you during this period? And if so, how do you recommend others find that?

Hannah: Yeah, 100%. When I was going through the investment banking to quitting and then to tech transition, part of the reason I felt so lost was that everyone around me worked in finance. So many people were in that world and they didn't think it was a big deal to work those long hours. And they just had their eyes so fixed on the prize of like, "I'm going to work here for two years, go into private equity, and that's my life," that the people who didn't want that anymore, it felt very challenging.

And that's why I so much recommend speaking to people who've gone down a path that maybe you're interested in. And I think having a community really, really helps because if you are making a change to your life, then that requires going out on a limb, doing something that maybe is not already within your community. We talked a little bit about specialization, and I do think life is you need to be increasingly specialized.

But at the same time, that can also make people feel like you're really locked in. I've spent all this time narrowing myself down, and what if my path is going to change? And I think that throughout all my pivots and what I'm trying to do now with a lot of my content is just to tell people that it's okay to have that nonlinear path if your direction changes.

Andrew: And actually that gets to the other thing I wanted to talk about because you are very intentional about creating content. So for the people you coach a mentor, do you suggest they create content? And then if so, how should they go about that?

Hannah: That's an interesting question. I think it depends. As all things in life do, it depends. I think it's a great way to showcase what you've been through in your career, some of the things you've made. But I think it's also tricky, especially because even creating content on LinkedIn, I think a lot of people feel like people I know from work are there. I feel very perceived.

I don't want my employers to know that I am doing something in order to "make a career pivot." So I think that can be challenging. But that being said, I think it can come in small steps. So let's say you want to get closer to AI. I think that is a great example of something that is such a trending topic now that you can start just creating things like projects you're doing related to AI or even just prompts that you've discovered that help in your industry.

I think if you're able to bridge what you're doing now with your pivot and find something in between that is really well positioned for you to speak about the experiences you've been through as well as certain insights and just relatable content that you have, I think that's the best way to do it.

Andrew: Yeah, it's like a slow transition almost, because obviously I come from the world of journalism, so those are where my examples come from. But what I often tell people when they're trying to make a pivot is like, listen, if you're a journalist and you're a health reporter, let's say, and you want to become a sports reporter, likely one day you're not just going to wake up and start doing sports stories.

So what I always suggest is I'm like, what if you start doing stories at the intersection of health and sports? So if someone hurts their ankle or something and they're out for the season, what is the possibility of them coming back to where they were? And also I think that helps show the value of someone coming from another industry, right?

Hannah: Yeah, 100%. I think that's such a great way of putting it. I think it's really finding that bridge. That's really where you're going to be able to bring value. And I think there's so many stories out there about how someone who is an outsider from an industry can actually go in and create such value. I think the other day I was just reading about the person who essentially created the first Nintendo video game console, and he was someone who came from a completely different industry and just had that outsider perspective that actually allowed him to see the value of something like that.

Andrew: Yeah, totally. And especially in the Nintendo example, Nintendo had been around for a century or whatever, but they made I think card games or something. So when you bring in someone from the outside, you sometimes have to make the case to the hiring manager about why that's valuable. But I think finding that message and then showing, hey, take a chance on me because I'm going to bring more value than you can imagine right now.

And then for people who are struggling right now, and I'm sure you get a lot of people who come to you and say, "Listen, this is much harder than I thought it would be," what is your advice for them? Because especially now, I think they see markets being uncertain. So what is your advice to them?

Hannah: Right now is a terrible time to be job searching. I think for anyone who has a job right now and is looking to pivot into something different, I think of that... Think about the short term versus the long term. Short term is what's happening in the economy, what's happening in the news that you're going to see on a day-to-day basis. It can feel really, really pressing, depressing, all of that, but you're doing something in the long run. And so to people who currently have a job, I'd probably say always be interviewing.

And I don't mean just pound the pavement and apply to every single job, but just be mindful of creating your mission statement for your next job. What is that positioning for yourself? That way when something like that crosses your radar, whether it's from speaking to someone or just even scrolling LinkedIn and seeing just the opportunity that fits that bill, you can say, "Ah, okay, maybe this is a good opportunity for me to look for it."

But otherwise, for folks who are out of a job and so many people are in that boat right now, yeah, I would just once again say think about where you are really positioned to succeed, especially given the market environment. You might hear all the news about the recessions and tariffs, the economy's horrible, companies are cutting jobs, but hey, at the same time, there are always companies that are going to be benefiting from these types of things.

On the day when all the tech companies stocks dropped, Thredup was a company that the stock went you,, and that's because they're part of the circular economy. They're not importing anything. There are always going to be those companies. So what are those companies? Think about it. And even for me, when I was job searching in 2020, I ended up pivoting into tech via a food delivery startup, and that's because food delivery during the pandemic skyrocketed.

We grew like crazy. And so if you're looking to pivot into something in the long term, but short term, you have financial obligations, you have goals that you're working towards, and you really need to feel that sense of stability, I don't think there's anything wrong with being opportunistic and just seizing upon that opportunity. Maybe in the long term you want to move into tech, but right now healthcare is hiring, so maybe there's something in health tech.

There's always that intersection and that bridge. And I think that when you view your career as something longer term, it's okay to make those opportunistic decisions in the short term as long as you can figure out, tell a story, and build those transferable skills to get you to where you're going long term.

Andrew: Yeah, no, I think that's a really good point. I feel like there's so much practical advice in here, and I really appreciate your time.

Hannah: Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Andrew. This was really fun.

Andrew: That was Hannah Zhang, a product marketer and content creator. Before you go, we want to hear from you. Get Hired launched an audience survey to help us understand what you want to hear on the show. You can find a link to the short survey in the show notes to this episode. I'd love it if you could fill it out. Get Hired is a production of LinkedIn News. The show is produced by Grace Rubin and Emily Reeves. Assaf Gidron engineered our show. Tim Boland mixed our show.

We get additional support from Alexandra Kuznietsova and Ali McPherson. Sarah Storm is our Senior Producer. Dave Pond is Head of Production & Creative Operations. Maya Pope-Chappel is Director of Content & Audience Development. Courtney Coupe is Head of Original Programming. Dan Roth is the Editor-in-Chief of LinkedIn. And I'm Andrew Seaman. Until next time, stay well and best of luck.