SHIFT | A Hard Pivot
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A Hard Pivot: When the Market Demands Reinvention
The Shift | Opening Reflection
As we end the first full week of 2026, many are charting new professional territory seeking new roles, exploring career pivots, launching ventures, or positioning themselves for advancement. Yet you’re doing so in one of the most challenging job markets in recent memory.
The question is not whether the market is difficult.
The question is: How do we move forward with intention, clarity, and confidence?
This is not a moment of powerlessness. For those willing to reframe the pivot as an opening rather than an ending, this period can become a launchpad, not through panic, but through purpose.
The Reality | A Market That Demands New Strategy
The jobless rate rose to 4.6% in November 2025, an increase from 4.4% in September 2025 and 4.0% at the start of the year in the United States, marking the highest jobless rate since 2021 even as the labor market shows mixed signals with modest job gains and slowing hiring momentum. Yet beneath that number lies a more complex reality:
Hiring has cooled significantly, especially in technology, media, biotech, and professional services.
The average job search has stretched to approximately six months (around 20-26 weeks), which is notably longer than in previous years.
Competition for each role has intensified dramatically.
Hiring processes have become more risk-averse and bureaucratic.
Translation: The market isn't broken. It's selective, compressed, and far less forgiving.
What No Longer Works
Many of the assumptions we've operated under for decades have quietly collapsed:
That linear careers signal competence
That uninterrupted tenure equals commitment.
That "culture fit" is a neutral criterion.
That applying and waiting constitutes a strategy.
The hard truth: You cannot wait to be chosen. You must position yourself to be the obvious, most logical choice.
Your Experience Is Not Liability. It's the Next Organization’s Asset.
If you've led through uncertainty, managed crises, or navigated complexity, you already possess something the market desperately needs but rarely knows how to value:
Pattern recognition. Judgment. Context.
The Evidence Is Clear
On age and experience:
The average age of successful founders is in the mid-40s.
Founders over 50 are significantly more likely to build durable companies than younger counterparts.
Experience compounds— it doesn't diminish.
On capability:
Professionals with 15+ years of experience demonstrate superior strategic decision-making, stakeholder management, and risk mitigation.
Breakthroughs often come from those who can connect past failures, adjacent industries, and long-range consequences.
Yet Bias Persists
The barriers are real:
Workers over 50 experience longer unemployment periods after layoffs
Black professionals face unemployment rates nearly double those of white professionals at comparable education levels.
Women especially women of color are penalized for career interruptions due to caregiving and other family demands.
Here's what matters: Experience doesn't diminish innovation. Bias diminishes access.
If you've been told explicitly or implicitly that your best years are behind you, take that as information, not truth.
You're not behind. You're ahead of a system that hasn't caught up.
Pivot With Purpose Not Panic
A pivot implies motion. But not all motion is progress.
This moment demands discernment, not desperation.
Before Chasing the Next Role, Pause and Ask:
What insight have I earned that is undervalued but essential right now?
What problems can I solve because of not despite my lived experience?
How can I leverage credibility, not just credentials, to create opportunity?
Career gaps, sector shifts, and nonlinear paths are not blank spaces. They are evidence of adaptability, resilience, and real-world leadership.
You are not starting from zero. You are starting with context.
Own Your Audacity—Build Your Blueprint
Audacity is often misunderstood. It's not bravado or recklessness.
It's belief backed by evidence.
Audacity Sounds Like:
Naming your value without apology
Reframing a "gap" as growth
Applying anyway
Asking for flexibility instead of self-selecting out
Speaking in outcomes, not just titles
Yes, audacity looks different depending on race, gender, age, financial security, and immigration status. Risk is not evenly distributed.
A Practical Blueprint for Action
Define Your Vision What change are you uniquely equipped to lead right now? Get specific.
Frame Your Value Speak in outcomes and impact, not tenure and titles. What problems have you solved? What results have you driven?
Build Your Support System Allies sharpen strategy. Find people who will challenge your thinking and amplify your positioning.
Test and Learn Agility outperforms perfection in unstable markets. Take smart risks. Iterate quickly.
This isn't about proving worth. It's about positioning impact.
A Direct Word to Hiring Managers
If innovation is truly your goal, it's time for uncomfortable honesty.
Stop Making These Mistakes:
❌ Equating youth with potential
❌ Penalizing career gaps caused by caregiving, illness, or layoffs
❌ Confusing pedigree with performance
❌ Defaulting to "culture fit" a code for sameness
Consider the Evidence:
✅ Diverse teams consistently outperform homogeneous ones on problem-solving and innovation
✅ Employees with nontraditional paths often demonstrate higher adaptability and retention
✅ Excluding experienced professionals narrows not strengthens your leadership bench
If every finalist looks the same, the problem isn't the pipeline. It's your lens.
What Real Innovation Requires:
Redefine potential: Look for pattern recognition, not just recent credentials.
Value resilience: Career gaps often signal adaptability, not risk
Expand your criteria: Ask what problems candidates have solved, not just where they've worked.
Audit your process: Where are you unintentionally filtering out capable talent?
Inclusion isn't a moral add-on. It's a strategic imperative.
In this market, the companies that win will be those that recognize experience as an asset, not a threat.
Use Your Superpowers for Good
While you're navigating this market, consider this: Your experience is valuable currency, especially for those just starting out.
Mentoring, advising, teaching, or community engagement isn't charity. It's an opportunity to contribute—to share your experience currency.
Contribution Does Two Things:
Creates opportunity for others at a time when access is shrinking.
Clarifies your own value in the market.
When you share what you know, you:
Stay connected to emerging trends and perspectives.
Build relationships that can lead to unexpected opportunities.
Demonstrate leadership in action, not just on paper.
Contribution isn't a detour from relevance. It's often the fastest path back to it.
Reflections | For Professionals in Transition
What part of my experience have I undervalued that the world now needs most?
How can I shift from seeking stability to building significance?
What bold move am I postponing that could unlock my next chapter?
Who in my network sees my value more clearly than I do right now?
Reflections | For Hiring Leaders
How are our hiring practices unintentionally excluding capable talent?
Where are we mistaking career gaps for risk instead of resilience?
What would innovation look like if we treated experience as an asset, not a threat?
What am I personally doing to challenge bias in our hiring decisions?
The Shift | From Survival to Significance
We are living through a true inflection point.
Careers are being disrupted, redefined, and reconsidered at a scale we haven't seen in decades. Layoffs, restructurings, hiring freezes, and organizational reckonings are forcing professionals to confront a hard truth:
What once worked no longer fits.
For experienced professionals especially, this moment can feel disorienting. Years of expertise, leadership, and contribution can seem invisible in a market that rewards speed and sameness.
But here's what's also true:
This moment is not about survival. It's about reinvention with intention.
The future doesn't belong to the youngest.
It belongs to the boldest, the wisest, and the most willing to reimagine purpose.
Disruption is not happening to us. It's being shaped by us through the choices we make, the risks we take, and the value we refuse to diminish.
The Last Word | Your Move
Don't wait for the market to shift. Make your shift now.
If you're in transition, choose one action from the blueprint above and focus on it this week.
If you're a hiring leader, audit one hiring decision against the criteria in this newsletter.
If you're employed but restless, identify one way to leverage your experience in service of others.
Transcend this job market. Don’t let it defeat you. Let it be your launchpad not your limitation.
Have a story, insight, or question to share? Reply to this newsletter on LinkedIn, where I read every response.
From the Editor
Perika Sampson
Founder & Principal, Sampson Dearborn Consulting
The editions of SHIFT begin with reflection—because meaningful change always starts there. I hope that this space becomes a home for thought leadership, practical wisdom, and stories that inspire both introspection and action.
If you find resonance in these words, I invite you to share them and to join me in shaping conversations that move us from awareness to accountability, from fatigue to renewal, and from inequity to collective healing.
Let’s exchange ideas, courage, and commitment—one story at a time.