Pivoting

The gerund form "pivoting" carried the concept of the business pivot into career language. Jenny Blake, a former career development program manager at Google, published Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One in 2016.1 Blake argued that career pivoting was not a reaction to crisis but a proactive strategy, a way of using existing strengths as a platform to move into adjacent roles, industries, or modes of working.

The distinction mattered. In startup culture, a pivot often meant starting over. In career language, pivoting implied building on what already existed.

Blake's framework described four stages: plant (identify existing strengths), scan (explore possible directions), pilot (test small experiments), and launch (commit to a new direction). The model drew on design thinking and lean methodology but applied them to individual working lives rather than products.2

The word found its largest audience during the pandemic. Between 2020 and 2022, millions of workers left their jobs in what economists called the Great Resignation. Many described what they were doing as pivoting, using the word to frame voluntary career change as purposeful rather than desperate.3

"Pivoting" also entered the language of higher education. Universities began offering programs in career pivoting, and coaching platforms marketed pivot frameworks to mid-career professionals. The word assumed that a linear career path was no longer the norm, and that the ability to change direction was itself a skill worth cultivating.

The linguistic shift from "career change" to "pivoting" reframed the same experience. A career change implied leaving one thing for another. Pivoting implied rotation around a fixed point, a continuity of identity even when the work itself looked different.4