131: Navigating Career Changes Into (or Out Of) The Government Sector with Elyse Levine

One topic that we have not talked about often, maybe ever, on the Career Clarity Show is navigating, trying to get into or get out of the government sector of jobs. Now, this is an area that is near and dear to my heart, because I spent the first part of my career and launched this business back when I was living and working in the Washington DC area. And when you are living in that part of the country in the United States you are going to meet lots of people who are federal employees. Then again when I moved out to Colorado, I found that I was still meeting lots of folks who are working in local and state government in different capacities, and some who are wanting out. And other people who are really wanting to feel like they were having a deeper impact in their careers, but who are currently in the private sector, who were looking for ways in. 

Navigating your way into or out of government as an employment source is tricky. It does not look like any of the things that you have learned if you have been exclusively job searching in the private sector. Or if you have been in government for your entire career, making the pivot back to civilian life is going to look really different in terms of how you talk about yourself, how you position yourself and what activities you do. 

I am so excited to have Elyse Levine, host of the Career Switch Podcast, to help me dig into all of this information. A serial career switcher herself, Elyse has worked at storied institutions, including the FBI and Disney in roles spanning social media strategy, project management, human resources, board governance and professional speech writing.

Want to learn more about our strategic framework for successful career change? Download The Roadmap to Career Fulfillment ebook right here!

Show Notes:

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• Career Switch Podcast
• LinkedIn: Career Switch Podcast
• Instagram: @careerswitchpodcast
• Roadmap to a Fulfilling Career eBook

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Transcript

Lisa Lewis Miller  0:04   

Welcome to the Career Clarity Show. If you want to create a career path you’ll love, you’re in the right place. I’m Lisa Lewis Miller, career change coach, published author and your host. And each week, we’ll bring you personal transformation stories, advice and insights from experts about how you can find a more fulfilling, soulful and joyful career. Hello, and welcome back to the Career Clarity Show, I am your host, Lisa Miller. And I am delighted that you are with us today. Because on today’s episode of The Career Clarity Show, we are going to be talking about a topic that is dear to my heart, but that we have not talked about almost at all, maybe ever on the Career Clarity Show, which is navigating, trying to get into or get out of the government sector of jobs. Now, this is an area that is near and dear to my heart, because I spent the first part of my career and launched this business back when I was living and working in the Washington DC area. And you know, when you are living in that part of the country in the United States, that you are going to meet lots of people who are federal employees. And when I moved out to Colorado, I found that I was still meeting lots of folks who are working in local and state government in different capacities, and some who are wanting out. And other people who are really wanting to feel like they were having a deeper impact in their careers, but who are currently in the private sector, who were looking for ways in. And one of the things that we almost never talk about on this podcast, but we should, is that navigating your way into or out of government as an employment source is tricky. It does not look like any of the things that you have learned if you have been exclusively job searching in the private sector. Or if you have been in government for your entire career, making the pivot back to civilian life, if you’re doing something in the military, or just private sector work is going to look really different in terms of how you talk about yourself, how you position yourself what activities you do. So I am so excited for today’s episode of the podcast where we’re going to dig into all of that information. So if you have ever thought about getting into working for government or getting out of working for government and your career switch, this is going to be the perfect episode of the podcast for you. And if you never thought about it, but you kind of like to have this information just to keep in your back pocket just in case or you know someone who is trying to get into or out of the government. Please keep track of this podcast too, and make sure to send it along to them so that they know what they can do to optimize their chances for success in making their transition. Our guest expert to talk about this topic today is Elise living. At least living is the host of the career switch podcast which inspires and empowers individuals to transition to more fulfilling careers by sharing the stories of people who have actually done it. A serial career switcher herself, at least has worked at storied institutions, including the FBI and Disney in roles spanning social media strategy, project management, human resources, board governance and professional speech writing. In addition to hosting the career switch podcast, at least currently serves as deputy chief of staff at the University of Southern California and runs sector switch, a career coaching platform for Public Service employees looking to transition to the private sector, at least believes deeply in the power of transferable skills to fuel a career change, and the impacts that life experiences and our own evolution has on our level of fulfillment in our careers. So you can see why I was so excited to have at least on the podcast today. Elyse, welcome to the Career Clarity Show.

Elyse Levine  3:57  

Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here. And I love what you’re doing with the Career Clarity Show. So thank you for having me. Well,

Lisa Lewis Miller  4:04  

I am delighted to have you too. And I feel like I want to start out with having you share a little bit about your background and your backstory, because you’ve worked at some cool places, both working in government in in the private sector. And I’m wondering if you’ll share with our listeners a little bit about what your career story has looked like so far, and how you navigated the decisions to hop into government and then to hop out

Elyse Levine  4:30  

100%? Absolutely. So I’m one of those weird people who went from the private sector to the government and then back to the private sector. And now I’m in higher education, which is a sort of a non profit, academia sector, which is kind of a whole thing. So I’m no stranger to the sorts of kind of big sector switches. So just to give you a little bit of background, I actually started my career in advertising. I worked at a view ad agencies and PR firms living in New York, right out of school doing social media strategy. And honestly, after a while, I just, I kind of got bored. Because I kind of felt like, you know, when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything is a nail, right? You can’t solve every single business problem with a new marketing campaign. Right. And so as I became more and more like, there’s got to be more to this, there’s got to be a better way. I started thinking about going to business school and getting into management consulting. So I did, I did that I went to NYU for business school as on part time basis while I was working full time, still at a PR firm. And I started interviewing with a bunch of consulting firms. You know, I interviewed with Deloitte, I interviewed with BCG and weirdly enough, the FBI came to campus and did a recruiting event. And I was like, Well, that sounds cool. Let me go see what that is, right? Turns out, the FBI had a program called the Special Advisor program, where they went to a number of business schools across the country and recruited people to essentially come into the Bureau as internal consultants. And I was kind of like, this is not something I’ve ever thought about ever in my whole life, right. But it’s something that sounds kind of pretty interesting. And at least, you know, one day I could tell my grandkids that I interviewed with the FBI. So I went through the interview process, I did you know, the first round of interviews was just kind of a normal sit down. And then the second round, they took us to DC for a day and we had a full day of interviews with FBI executives, went to the FBI museum, we got to see some really cool stuff, I got to interview with the head of the counterterrorism division. And I remember telling him that I worked in social media, and he was like, Great, how would you find terrorists on Twitter? And I was like, Okay, this is a real interview question that I have to answer. So I don’t even remember what I made up. But. But really, at the end of that day, I was like, This is a once in a lifetime opportunity that I don’t think I’m ever going to have ever again. And so when the offers came in, and I was lucky enough to get offered this position at the Bureau, you know, I was sort of looking at this and I was looking at, I was evaluating to like PWC versus bureau. And my thought process was really like, if I hate it, I can go back in six months, you know, but if I love it, I’ll have a top secret security clearance, which is super marketable. I’ll be doing these really cool things that I’ve never thought about nobody in my family has ever worked for the government or the military, or have been a police officer or anything, so it was totally outside my wheelhouse. So that’s how I ended up getting into the FBI in the first place.

Lisa Lewis Miller  8:04  

So are they listening to our conversation right now? Do we need to edit and censor how we move forward in this podcast?

Elyse Levine  8:11  

Um, no. However, they’re definitely not listening. But we were warned. I cannot tell you the number of times we were warned not to tell people that we work for the FBI. And it’s funny because you know, so I did a few rotations. When I was in the bureau, I worked for about a year in the cyber and counterintelligence divisions, I worked for about a year and a half and human resources. And then they actually brought me out to Los Angeles to be the chief of staff in the LA Field Office, which are all really cool experiences. But while I was in HR, I was leading employer marketing and sort of recruiting for the Bureau, and was sort of like, how do you recruit without actually telling people you work for the FBI? Right? That’s, that’s kind of hard. So it’s a it’s an interesting dynamic.

Lisa Lewis Miller  8:56  

That is awesome. It sounds like your previous path, opened up some really interesting, funky directions within

Elyse Levine  9:03  

the FBI that you probably never thought that you’d get the opportunity to do. Yes, absolutely. And I think what’s super interesting about it, too, is I sort of got into government. I mean, obviously, that’s a non traditional way that people get into government, right? I didn’t just submit a resume and have to go through the whole hiring process. I mean, I did have to go through a whole hiring process, but it was just, you know, it was sort of like through this business school funnel, right. And I know a lot of people don’t get into government that way. And I met so many people while I was at the Bureau, who had gotten there from so many different kinds of careers, and so many different backgrounds, you know, and it was always interesting to sort of figure out kind of what led them here. How did they end up getting this role in this place, you know, and then they end up staying for 20 years and retiring with the government. And it was that that was really, really That was interesting to see too.

Lisa Lewis Miller  10:03  

Well, knowing that there’s only so much you can tell us about what you got to do at the Bureau. What, what was it like?

Elyse Levine  10:10  

It was, it was awesome. I mean, you have to when you’re, whenever you’re thinking about a government career, you have to sort of understand, right? It’s like working for any big corporation. And I always say, I mean, I came out of the Bureau and went to Disney. And honestly, Disney was more bureaucratic than the FBI, right? Like, it’s just, it’s like, it’s like, kind of like working for any huge corporation. And so I know, you mentioned a big portion of your audience is sort of corporate employees. And so I’m sure they can relate to this, right, you have a number of red, you have a bunch of red tape, you have to get through, you have to get anything done, you have all kinds of people who’ve been there forever, who are not used to change and who are not used to pushing through major initiatives, right. And so my role at the Bureau was, as this internal consultant was really to, I was working for the heads of these divisions, and I was really put in charge of special projects, right. So things that innovative things that they really wanted to do. You know, my first project was, you know, trying to develop sort of a collaborative process between the cyber and counterintelligence divisions. And that was very controversial, because they were very, very different. And they operated in different ways. And they had a lot of history, right. And so it was like, navigating that. My second role in HR was leading employer marketing, I got the FBI on LinkedIn, but I had to go through counterintelligence and our security office and six other divisions, to even allow the FBI to have a presence on LinkedIn. So there’s, there’s a lot of stuff that you have to work through, you have to kind of take it with, for what it is, you have to really learn to be diplomatic, and get people on your side. It’s so I think, in the private sector, we get So especially in a lot of these competitive corporate cultures, we get very, I get caught up with this idea that like, we just execute, right, we need to execute, we need to get stuff done, we need to like be on top of it. And what I found was, yes, it’s obviously good to be a good project manager and be on top of it, but you really the relationship building that you had to do and the diplomacy that you had to employ, and the small little ways that you had to add value, you know, where people, people just really appreciate that, you know, and that’s really how you get stuff done in the government. So it’s, I kind of liken it to working for any, any huge corporation. But that’s really what it was like, and it’s so fulfilling. I mean, you have the mission, which is to uphold the Constitution and protect the American people. And like, that’s what you do. Right? And so you just feel every day, like you’re making progress towards that goal. And, you know, the FBI, certainly not without its controversy, but it definitely, it definitely was a fulfilling, frustrating, but awesome experience.

Lisa Lewis Miller  13:15  

So you talk about the FBI with what sounds like a certain amount of warm fuzzies. What was it that made you want to leave?

Elyse Levine  13:27  

What’s very interesting is, and I don’t think that this is necessarily applicable across every single government agency. But at some point, I felt like I kind of had hit the ceiling, I kind of felt like, you know, many of the roles in the bureau that I would have been really interested in doing long term, were kind of set aside for agents. And unless I wanted to kind of build my career in leading finance or leading it, or HR. I had to leave, right. And I was really looking for much more of a broader role. And something that would allow me to, you know, essentially work my way up and accompany, right, and I can’t be the director of the FBI, but I can be, you know, and right now at the at the Bureau, I couldn’t be like, even the Deputy Director, right, like, so there were certain positions that I saw were limited to me. And after about four years, it was, like I said, an awesome experience. But I just kind of felt like I had hit that ceiling and it was time for me to get a move on and hop back to the private sector and see, you know, what was out there for me?

Lisa Lewis Miller  14:43  

And do you feel like when you look at other folks who are government employees, be they federal, be the local? Do you find that that’s one of the biggest reasons that you often see other people wanting to make the switch into the private sector is that they’ve just run into too many feelings or too many limitations that really limit their ability to grow.

Elyse Levine  15:04  

I think so I think that what I have seen is many, many people, you, there’s a lot of really awesome benefits to working in the public sector, you have a great work life balance, right, you have great policies and holidays. And like, I mean, from a work life balance perspective, and really even from a salary perspective, from all of that you are well taken care of, as a government employee, and a lot of people really appreciate that. And if that’s your main priority in your life, awesome, you should totally work for the government, right. But what I have found was many of the people that I have spoken to, especially in the course of my work with sector switch is even people coming from you know, obviously, I’ve talking to a lot of people who are making this change from the Bureau. I’ve talked to people who are making a change from the military who are making changes from even nonprofits, right, or trade associations. And it’s, it’s sort of the same thing, what I generally find is that people kind of say, well, I’ve been doing this for a while. And I’m not sure there’s more anywhere else I can go, right. If you have other priorities, you love to travel, you really want to use all your vacation time, all that stuff. A lot of people don’t mind. You just kind of like, do what you do. And you move up slowly, but surely, and all that stuff. But if you really want to, like make a jump, and you really want to if you want to move up the corporate ladder, so to speak, I find that a lot of people find that very, very hard to do in the government in any sort of, you know, timeframe that they kind of like have the patience for. Right.

Lisa Lewis Miller  16:40  

Yeah, that is very fair. I think that I think it’s one of the the trade offs of getting to go into an organization that offers so many benefits and so many protections and is so cushy, in terms of the things that provides you and your lifestyle, is that when they’re offering that they need to create a lot of stability and predictability and reliability in the work in the workforce. So it just creates a lot of limitations to creating a brand new job spontaneously for a high performer who’s got ambitions and talents in a specific area, or for allowing the organization to evolve at a pace that might keep up with the pace of technological change or industry change in that particular department or function or sector. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Elyse Levine  17:29  

It does. And I think that this is not to say I don’t want to put out there any sort of idea that like ambitious people can’t work in the government, because you totally can, right. Like, I worked in the government, I wanted, I made a lot of, you know, what I felt were really meaningful changes that were meaningful, at least to me. And I could have continued to do that. Right. Like, and there are lots of people I know, I have lots of friends who are still in the government who are doing amazing, amazing work, right? But it really is a constant. It’s a constant battle, right? You have the freedom to do, you know, kind of push forward these initiatives, right? But it’s very much on you, you really have to be willing to take on that mantle, you really have to be willing to overcome all these people who are telling you no, no, no, no, no, you know, you sort of have to be the change you want to see, right. And lots of people do it. Last people are awesome at it. People do work their way up. And the government, I mean, 100%, you make great contacts, you see cool people, like, there’s a lot of opportunity for ambitious people. But for me, at that point, I just felt like, there was not much else that I wanted to do at the Bureau. And I kind of wanted to see where I could make my own way somewhere else.

Lisa Lewis Miller  18:49  

Yeah, at least I appreciate you adding that distinction. Because I feel like it’s it’s true. No matter where you go, or what you do, and what kind of an organization that you work for that you’re going to have trade offs. And for some people, you if you are highly ambitious, and you can find a path for yourself within government where the trade offs feel good and feel worth making, you can totally have a long, happy, fulfilling, satisfying career there. Yeah. And it sounds like in your story, you hit a point where the trade offs that you were making just didn’t feel good anymore. And you started to think about if not this, then what? And I’m curious when you thought about leaving government? What was the searching process like and what were you noticing as differences in your approach? As you were looking for life after the

Elyse Levine  19:41  

bureau? Yeah, so this was a very interest. This was a hard time, because I did a few things. Well, once I started having this idea, and I started kind of thinking about looking around. You know, obviously I think your first step and everybody’s coming Step is to just go look at jobs, right? Just go on LinkedIn and look at jobs, which I did. And I was like, Oh, my God, these are so specific. Something that I had never really understood or realize, even during my time in the private sector, was that a lot of the roles in the private sector are very specific, like your job at Amazon is to work on SEO, right? Or your job, wherever is to work on this one thing. And at the Bureau, especially at that time, I was chief of staff in the Los Angeles field office, and I was doing all these different things, right. I was doing facilities work and communications, and, you know, finance and HR and like, just like kind of some of everything, and I loved it. And I was like, Where do I go from here? Right. I also had, just to, just to add, I also had had this really interesting experience where I had had dinner with the Attorney General and the FBI director at the time. And like, just like, and like the next day, I was thinking about looking for job. And I was like, what, what do you do? What do you do after that? Like, I don’t even I don’t know. So I started looking at all these jobs. And I was like, gosh, they’re so specific. I don’t even know where to look, right. And I decided I wanted to hire a career coach to help me make figure that out and make that transition. But I had a very, very hard time finding a career coach, who specialized in people changing careers from the government. Like they’re just, there were lots of career coaches who were like, oh, yeah, work on your resume? Or oh, yeah, you know, just the typical career coach thing, which is super helpful, I’m sure for many other people. But for me, I was like, I don’t even know how to think about this for myself, right? I’m at this different point in my career, I’ve grown so much. I’ve done all these different things. You know, my background before the bureau was in social media strategy, but at the Bureau, I did project management and HR and all of these other things, like, what do I even do with this? And so I spent a lot of time trying to find myself a career coach, who could help me think about this. And when I did find one, she was wonderful. And she really helped me figure out like, Okay, what sort of, are my life priorities going into the private sector? And really start from like, the 30,000 foot? What do you want out of life, right. And once we figure out what you want out of life, we can start to kind of narrow down this funnel into a career that’s a little more specific for you, right, or a career track or that kind of thing. So she had me think about that, what I started doing was going through job postings for jobs that I thought were interesting, and just highlighting bullet points out of them, that I was like, oh, yeah, I’d like to do that one thing, right, the rest of this job, I don’t know. But I’d like to do this one bullet point, you know, after a while, and I had like, 20 jobs that I had, in which I had highlighted things, I started copying and pasting my highlights into a spreadsheet. And I essentially created my ideal role. And I started looking for keywords. And I started that were in those highlighted modes, and I started kind of really narrowing down like, Okay, I think I want to do like something along the lines of like, kind of what the to staff job that I’m doing now is right. And I love the sort of operational aspect. And that’s kind of how I sort of made my way into this role at Disney, you know, I thought I wanted to work for a major corporation, I am a big Disney fan personally. And I kind of navigated my way into this role, and ended up coming up. I actually, before I found the actual position, I actually got contacted by a Disney recruiter with the position that I ended up going into at Disney. So it again, it worked out kind of well for me, but I, but I had gone through, you know, eight months process to even get to this point where like, I knew it was going to be interesting to me.

Lisa Lewis Miller  24:10  

Totally well, and I feel like your experience at the Bureau leading employer marketing is kind of an interesting precedent to thinking about yourself as a product that has to be marketed, and thinking about, okay, how do I talk about myself in my experiences in a way where the transferrable pieces will really stand out? And it sounds like you did that to the extent that then external recruiters and headhunters were noticing you seeing you understanding what you were about, even though you were in the public sector. And were able to connect the dots and draw the conclusions of oh, this thing that at least as in this space, could work really well in our space, too.

Elyse Levine  24:55  

Yeah, and I think that’s a really important point. So I’m thank you for bringing that up. One thing that I was always conscious of during my time at the Bureau was okay, if I’m going to go into this government job, I need an exit strategy, right? I didn’t know where I was going to go after the bureau or what I was going to do, or even how long I was going to be at the Bureau. But the whole time I was there. I was thinking about my career narrative, right? How was I going to position this on my resume? What, you know, through each kind of role that I had at the Bureau, it was how does this fit within my overall narrative that I’m trying to tell here? Right, once I started getting more into this, okay, I think I want to focus on kind of like an executive engagement chief of staff role, you know, I really worked hard to kind of make sure that my resume was reflecting that, you know, and it’s very hard. And what I see now from a lot of people who sort of send me their resumes coming out of the government is the government government roles are very hard to translate to the private sector, right, they have different names, you have a much broader scope of responsibility. There’s a lot that’s different. So what I see so for example, the way I positioned my sort of, we’re calling it, it’s the Special Advisor program at the Bureau. And so I said, Okay, I’m, I was part of this program, this internal consulting program that allowed me to rotate and work across different divisions. And within these division, he were the roles that I filled. And I made up kind of private sector applicable names for the roles that I filled up the bureau, right, I didn’t just say I’m a management and program analyst, because that doesn’t make any sense to anybody. So what I really tried to do was, say, I was the project manager and team lead for this cyber counterintelligence project. I was director, director of employer marketing for human, the Human Resources Division, right, I was the chief of staff in the LA office, my technical title was like, special assistant. Right. So just things that I wasn’t lying at all. But I definitely like was trying to make it translatable, while telling the truth, of course, about my experience, and what I did. So I think that’s a really important point is to always think about as you’re going from the private sector to the government, think about how this fits into your career narrative. You know, I’ve told people who are section chiefs, like you should say that you’re the executive director, or you’re the vice president of right, like, there are different ways you can translate these titles and your scope of responsibilities, so that you can kind of get a role in the private sector coming out of the government.

Lisa Lewis Miller  27:30  

Let’s dive into that a little bit further. Because it’s, I think, a struggle that folks in the private sector can encounter to when they’re doing a job where the title that’s given is just bananas, and it is not going to translate to anywhere else. How do you represent what the job title probably would be? If it made any more sense? In a way that’s not going to get you into any sort of like integrity or honesty, funkiness, or hot water? I think one of the biggest questions that I hear a lot is like, okay, so I was doing this role that was called, like, senior generalist to, like, that was my title. But what I was actually doing was project management for this initiative. And then I was doing, you know, like, whatever other things I was doing, how do I communicate that I’m actually a project manager, without, without lying without misrepresenting what my actual title was in the role? Yeah, I

Elyse Levine  28:34  

think there’s two ways you can think about this, you can think about this as something that you kind of explain on your resume, right, where you have, you know, sort of that title, senior job or less to, and then a little description underneath that says, was responsible for project managing all these things, right. Or you can do it in a way where you sort of bring that front and center. So just to so just to explain that a little bit more. I, the way that I think about this is, whenever I’m thinking about a resume, especially for the private sector, this isn’t really applicable to the government, but for the private sector, I try to make things on my resume as digestible and easily readable as possible. So when it was for me, I was saying, I’m a Special Advisor, I’m part of this program. But I put a paragraph on my resume that literally just said, this is what the special advisor does, right. And I was part of this program. And within that program, here were the roles that I did. So I didn’t actually say this was my job title. These were my job titles, I said, these are the roles that I filled, you know, and I think you can do something like that, where you say, like, you know, special generalist, too is, you know, sort of a senior level position, generally responsible for these things. And while I was in this role, here were the main three things that I did right and you can call them out specifically in bullets on your resume. Right. I think the other thing thing that you can do. And I don’t? I don’t know, maybe you know better than I do. But I don’t know how much titles, like how much people pay attention to titles versus language on your resume, I tend to try to call things out in a digestible way just so that people can, we can just get their attention and have it known that I do project management, right. But you can always just make sure that you have those keywords, in your descriptions, and in your bullet points, and really make it quantifiable and really make it you know, sort of while the if the title is not translatable, at least you can make your experience translatable, right? We can say things like project manage X number of projects lead to a x percent growth in whatever, all that kind of thing. So, does that make sense?

Lisa Lewis Miller  30:49  

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say, one other thing that you can do in your title is, let’s say I had a position where I was the the grassroots Public Affairs account executive. And I was making moves in my career where the grassroots Public Affairs part were not actually helpful to where I wanted to go. Like those were descriptors that were true, but we’re not going to be useful in showing my career story. In an example, like that, you can just boil your title down to account executive, and take off some of those modifiers and some of the adjectives that might be helpful in some circumstances, but may not be helpful in the particular circumstance you’re finding yourself in at this moment, to still feel like you’re in integrity, and still feel like if somebody were to do a background check on you to call and verify your title and your date of employment, that the information they would get back from your former employer would still jive with what was represented on your resume or in your LinkedIn.

Elyse Levine  31:54  

100%. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, you can always link to your company page on your LinkedIn profile, you can always, you know, get your peers to take a look at it and say, like this, this seems okay. Right. You know, like, I can position it this way. So there’s lots of feedback

Lisa Lewis Miller  32:12  

you can get as well, totally. And at least I want to come back to something you said a couple minutes ago that I wonder if it caught listeners the same way that it caught me on saying that when you went into the government, you went in intentionally trying to create an exit strategy. And it almost feels like the kind of thing where like, well, if you’re going into a marriage, like why would you sign a prenup beforehand. But I think that there’s a lot of strategy and risk management in wherever you’re taking a job, be it public sector, be it private sector, thinking about what you do, if it doesn’t work out, that even though you are not intending for it to become a dumpster fire, right, you’re not intending for it to go sideways. But if you know, in the back of your mind, what the plan B is, it could make it a lot easier to let the good be good in your current job. But also not to feel a huge amount of pressure or stress on that I have to stay here and I have to make this work, because it’s my one thing, and I haven’t cultivated any other options. So it’s an interesting strategy that somebody could look at on the outside and say like, wow, you were a real Debbie downer on that. But that probably gave you a lot of freedom and optionality to feel like you could leave when it was time. But also to feel like you could be fully enjoying it and fully invested in the time with the Bureau while you were there.

Elyse Levine  33:42  

100%. And that’s a great point. And I didn’t even think of it as like a Debbie Downer thing. I wasn’t thinking about it as terms just like a career prenup, but that’s a good way to think about it. I mean, for me, it was what’s my narrative here, right? Every job that I take was my narrative. It’s not necessarily about like, okay, when I leave, what am I gonna? How am I gonna position myself it was more like, how does this fit into my overall to steal from Michelle Obama becoming as a person and as somebody who’s, you know, invested in my career? How does this fit and honestly, it was also a great way to just like, even educate my family and friends on what the hell I did for the FBI. Right? Like, because I got many questions from people who were like, Do you have a gun? Do you have a badge? Do you arrest people like, and I’m like, No, that’s not what I do. Let me tell you what I do. Right? And when they say, Okay, well, what like, how does that even have anything to do with what you were doing before? Right? I can tell them that. And so you’re constantly working on this narrative. It helps you pitch it helps you. It helps you have a better idea of what you want to get out of the roles that you’re in, to be honest. And so like, I don’t think Think about it as like, what am I going to tell people when I try to leave? It’s more like, how does this? How does this role fit with my overall narrative. So I know what parts of this role I really want to focus on and what parts of this role, maybe I want to let other people focus on right. Like, as a chief of staff in the LA field office, a big priority for me was our communications and relationships with the public and private sector because I love communications. Right. And I had come from this background, I was doing marketing and PR, and I felt like I could really contribute there. And I felt like that totally made sense for me. So but there were other things like finance, that were a little bit of a part of my role, but weren’t, I didn’t make the major priority, you know what I mean, and I could have if that was what I was interested in. But I think it’s just about having a narrative in your head. So you know, and this is in any job, like you mentioned, you just know, what you want to do, and what is going to resonate the most with you in any role that you’re in.

Lisa Lewis Miller  36:00  

Love that. And it sounds like the punch line is Be intentional, exactly intentional about what decisions you’re making be intentional about when you raise your hand to work on specific projects. And that is a constant refrain that can serve people really well throughout their careers. Yeah. And I want to talk about this narrative piece, with respect to folks who are going the other direction in their sector, let’s say that there’s somebody who’s listening to this, who’s in the private sector, in whatever form, right corporate, nonprofit education, wherever you want to be. And they want to make the move into the public sector. And they have not quite been so fortunate as to get headhunted directly out of their grad program. What are some of the advice and tips that you would give to folks around narrative building and how to advance your candidacy if you’re wanting to move from a space as somebody who does a little bit more of a focus narrow role into the government space where they might be looking for someone who has a more broad swath of experience? Or who’s more of a generalist?

Elyse Levine  37:05  

So I think the things that you have to think about are first of all, when you say public sector, what kind of public sector role are you thinking about? Because there are many, right, you could work for an NGO, you can work for a trade association work for a nonprofit, or you could go work for the government and local state and federal government are all different beasts. So I’d say first of all, get very specific on exactly what what part of the public public sector you want to be in. If it is a government role, look, first and foremost at the requirements for the role. So to go in at a certain level, you’re going to need a certain number of years of education, you’re going to need a certain level of sort of required experiences that they’ll vet with you on your application. So you want to make sure that you’re just you’re looking at those specific requirements. First and foremost, it always helps to do some informational interviews and get a really a good sense of like, Okay, what does this role actually entail? What am I actually looking for here, and so that you can kind of narrow down where you want to go in the government. Again, you’re going to find as you do your research that the way the government positions, things, and the number of sheer, the sheer number of acronyms that are used are just like, unbelievable. So what I actually did, when I started working for the Bureau was I kept a notebook full of acronyms that I would just like, write down what they meant, and I would actually refer to it. But so do some research, do some informational interviews, I think it’s always a good idea to make some contacts, what I see a lot of the time is people who want to go from the private sector to the government, especially the federal government will try to get a job as like a contractor. And that can really help your candidacy getting into the government, right? Because you Istat you work directly in these offices, you establish relationships. But it kind of works both ways where one, you can create great relationships. But two, you’re kind of stuck in this contractor role, you know what I mean? And it’s hard to break out of so I think it’s always a good thing to apply for government jobs, there’s always they’re going to take veterans before they take anybody else. They’re going to take a certain number of people before they take anybody else for the roles. So if there are specific hiring events, or specific programs that provide a sort of a different pathway into the government than just applying on like USA Jobs, I would say definitely explore those opportunities. You know, we have, the Bureau has, especially for people who want to become an agent, for example. They have recruiting events all across the country for people who want to become agents and they’ll talk you through the hiring process. You meet directly with recruiters and you go through like a very formal process. So I guess that’s that’s what I would say was make sure you have a really good understanding of requirements, make sure you know exactly what kind of public sector role you want to get into. And then, and do a bunch of research and then try to find pathways that aren’t just on job boards, which I think is true of any, any role.

Lisa Lewis Miller  40:16  

Yeah, very true. And I think, you know, if you’re going to go through the USA, jobs.gov job board, there’s so many hoops you have to jump through and so many things, you have to be very specific and very careful about, like USA Jobs does not reward humility,

Elyse Levine  40:34  

like, tell them that you are a 10, out of 10 at everything, even if you feel like maybe you’re only an eight or a seven out of 10. Because the way that they run through their processes, it’s so important to be at the top of the pile, especially after they move through some of the other prioritized groups like veterans who get first crack. And I would even say, I mean, look at examples of federal resumes, because what you’ll see is that they are very, very literal. And I will tell you, from my experience in HR, and marketing and recruiting, the people who look at these resumes are very, very literal, right? So when the when the when the bullet point says, project, manage and did something or something else, make sure you have that in your resume, right. So, you know, make it as literal as possible, people aren’t going to make inferences in the same way that they might in the private sector. So just be as literal factual, every point of your experience as possible. You don’t need to keep your federal resume to one page, it can be much more than one page. You really want to position yourself as literally qualified as possible.

Lisa Lewis Miller  41:51  

Yeah, love that. Well, at least I feel like there are a million more things that we could talk about with respect to getting into government or getting out of government. But for those people who are interested in learning more about you and the work that you do, and your podcast and diving into exploring this topic a bit more, where can they go to get more resources?

Elyse Levine  42:13  

Absolutely, yeah, you can definitely check out my podcast website career switch podcast.com. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, I’m just Elisa being on LinkedIn and you can find me. You can check out my social media pages for the podcast, career switch podcast on LinkedIn careers, which podcast on Instagram. And feel free to email me my contact information is on those pages. I’m career switch podcast@gmail.com. If you have any questions, or if anybody wants to talk about getting a job in the government or coming out of the government, you know, reach out I would love to talk to you. And definitely I’m happy to always share my experience and and talk to people. So thanks.

Lisa Lewis Miller  42:57  

Well, at least thank you for coming and sharing just this smidgen of all of your brilliance on the topic with us today.

Elyse Levine  43:04  

Awesome, Lisa, thank you so much for having me. It’s been really fun.

Lisa Lewis Miller  43:14  

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