Leaving Development: Top Tips for Pivoting to the Private Sector

February, 2025

Right now, my LinkedIn feed is a massacre. The current administration’s illegal attempt to cut USAID has left an entire community of talented, hard working, mission-driven professionals in turmoil and furloughed limbo. Many are now being forced to ask themselves critical questions: What’s next? What am I qualified to do? Who am I outside of this work?

In 2020, like many others, I was laid off due to COVID-19. I had been unhappy at my job for a while and was a year away from starting my MBA, intending to slowly make the pivot into the private sector. Being laid off was a shock to my system, accelerating my transition and throwing me into a year of independent consulting to bridge the gap.

Without a steady job, I tapped my network, gathered my brain trust, and made a ton of mistakes. It was an intense journey, but transitions are rarely linear, and mine was no exception.

I don’t have all the answers, but I’ve helped a number of people transitioning out of development over the last few years; here are my top seven tips.

My Top Tips for Making a Career Pivot

1. Convene Your Brain Trust 🧠

Find your people—former colleagues, mentors, bosses, family, friends. These are people who care about you and who know your skills, value, and passion. They will provide honest, useful feedback and guidance - use them. These people genuinely want to help you out. There’s no set size for your brain trust, but I recommend at least three people. My brain trust includes my Dad, my uncle, my best friend from business school, an old mentor, and an old colleague.

Your brain trust can be activated whenever you need them; I activated my brain trust in November when I became the COO of my company and desperately needed guidance on making the transition, negotiating, etc. Ask them questions - what they think you should do next, what your top skills are, if they’ll connect you to a friend or former colleague that could help you talk through options. They want to help you. Use them and treat them right, and they’ll be some of your strongest connections.

2. Redo Your Resume for the Private Sector ✂️

Your multi-page, development-sector CV isn’t going to cut it. You need a one-page, pithy, and quantitative resume:

• Numbers matter: Include as many quantitative stats as you can. If you don’t have exact figures, estimate. For example, instead of “Managed projects,” say, “Managed a $5M portfolio across 10 countries.”
• Eliminate jargon: No acronyms. No donor-specific language. Share your resume with someone in your brain trust that has no experience in development and have them highlight anything they don’t understand (”What is a Private Sector Engagement (PSE) strategy?”).
• Optimize for digital searches: Use industry-relevant keywords and format clearly. Grab a job description for a job you want and match the language.
• Remove irrelevant sections: If you’re targeting private-sector roles, AIDAR certifications don’t matter.
• Include your LinkedIn URL: Make sure it’s easy to read and includes only your name.
• Be strategic with bullet points: Focus on breadth and scope—size of programs, partnerships, and budgets managed, with 1-3 meaty bullets per position.

3. Understand the Three Pivots: Industry, Function, Location 📍

A career pivot typically involves shifting in one or more of the following dimensions:

1. Industry – Moving from development to tech, finance, consulting, etc.
2. Function – Shifting from program management to business development, strategy, operations, etc.
3. Location – Transitioning to a new city or region.

The more pivots you make, the harder the transition. However, your first job out of development does not need to be perfect. Think of it as your first foot out the door: doing grant or program management at a slightly different company may not feel like the job transition you imagined, but a foot out the door is a foot out the door. It paves the way for future jobs.

The “triple pivot” (industry, function, and location) is the most challenging and often requires additional education, reskilling, or certifications. Be aware of how many pivots you’re targeting. Expect imposter syndrome, rejection, and growth.

4. Breaking into a New Industry 🔨

If you’re trying to break into a new industry, and you’re unsure what to do, a few brainstorming tips:

1. Identify what you value and what you enjoy.
2. Identify your top skills. Research other sectors and pull key words & phrases that align with your skills.
3. Understand industry trends, where your skills might align, and where market opportunities exist. Do your own research into what sounds interesting.
4. Use ChatGPT/Claude as a brainstorming buddy. Upload your resume and ask it where it thinks your skills would best fit. Or tell it what industry you’re targeting, and what role you’d be a best fit for. Treat it like a colleague or career coach.
5. Be aware of limits: if you’re attempting to break into a particularly networked industry, like venture capital or impact investing, connections are everything. If you send in a blind resume, it’s extremely unlikely to get a second glance. Start to attend local investor and startup events. An MBA is a common pathway, but entrepreneurial experience is also highly valued. Figure out how you want to get in, and make a plan to get there. Warning: if you are targeting VC/impact investing, it will probably take a few pivots to get there.

5. The LAMP List and the 2-Hour Job Search 🔎

The best job search methodology I learned in business school was the LAMP List, adapted from “The 2-Hour Job Search.” Essentially the idea behind this template is that we waste a lot of our job search time messing around on LinkedIn & Google, and looking at the same organizations over and over again, making the whole job search process feel disorganized and difficult. Instead, create a simple Excel/Sheets document, and spend 2 hours chained to your computer with a spreadsheet open:

• L – List potential employers. These are groups that you would be interested in working with. Most of these will be eliminated so let yourself list anyone and everyone. When I did this, I started with name brand employers I knew off the top of my head, then I googled what I was interested in, and wrote them down. It's super tempting to do more research in the moment but trust me, resist and just write a list of the names. Even if you don't really want to work for them, just write it down, and trust the process. You can cross them out later.
• A – Alumni connections: Identify contacts in those organizations. This is a proxy measure for finding a "sympathetic contact", i.e. getting a step in the door to a reference.
• M – Motivation score: Rank companies based on your interest. Trust your gut, do you really want to work for them?
• P – Postings: See if they have active job openings. This is a proxy measure for urgency. Counter-intuitively, here you're measuring purely the quality & quantity of job postings that they currently have available. Orgs with the perfect sounding jobs and short timelines get bumped up in your applying priority level (to avoid the dreaded FOMO of missing the perfect job opening). Don’t actually click through and look at the job postings! This will be a huge time & energy suck.

After creating the above list in 2 hours, you’ll have a prioritized list of companies and jobs to apply for. Which brings us to our next step…

6. Never Press “Easy Apply” – Network, Network, Network 👨‍👨‍👧‍👧

Always reach out to someone in the company before applying—ideally on the team, not HR. Be curious: ask about their experience, challenges, and company culture. Request referrals when appropriate - worst thing they can say is no. Best case, your name is on the top of the pile.

Attend webinars, local meetups, and industry events to expand your network.

Applying for an open requisition on LinkedIn is like playing the lottery—networking is the real differentiator. Quality, not quantity.

7. Rest & Protect Your Energy 🔋

Job searching is exhausting. If you’re unemployed, treat it like a 9-to-5 —don’t let it consume your evenings and weekends. If you’re employed, plan for a half day on Sunday in a coffee job and get as much done as you can. Taking breaks will make you more effective.

If you’re reading this and feeling stuck, I see you. I’ve been there. Job searching is a brutal process. My full transition into a tech start-up took a couple years - from reskiling in an MBA to six painful months job hunting, filled with self-doubt and frustration. But then, I found the right fit. I became employee #1 at my startup, and I’ve grown more in these past few years than I ever thought possible.

Your job search won’t be linear. It might take longer than you expected. But you will find your place. International development attracts empathetic, hard working people with valuable skills, passion, and dedication. Dedicated people make the world better by never giving up.

If you need support, please shoot me a DM on LinkedIn and I’d be happy to help.

We’re stronger together 💪