Are You Considering an Unretirement Career Pivot? Here are a Few Quality Examples

Unretirement Career Pivot

Making an unretirement career pivot may sound a bit strange. I was first introduced to the term unretirement by Chris Farrell in his book Unretirement: How Baby Boomers are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and the Good Life way back in 2016.

Back then the thought was that many baby boomers would retire in the coming years but would seek a different kind of retirement. Maybe they would look for an encore career, or a second career that had more meaning.

The term has exploded in the last year in that millions of additional workers retired during the pandemic, but many either need to find a way to make an income (think inflation), or others are just failing at being retired. They need something to do.

Let me give you some quality pointers.

Return to Your Past Career Path

This unretirement path would seem to be the most logical. If you are retiring and just want to make some extra income, you could approach your current employer about cutting back.

We have a member of the Career Pivot community who recently did just that. He waited and waited to tell his employer that he was retiring. He thought they would be angry with him but instead they offered a part time position where he could continue to contribute to his retirement plan.

The interesting outcome from this was he discovered he really did not want to work very much in his old profession. He loved the people but not the work.

If you are already retired, you could consider returning to your past employers.

Have You Considered an Interim Position

There is a growing need to fill senior level positions on an interim basis. These jobs typically last 3-6 months, pay well and often come with benefits.

I have published 3 different podcast interviews with companies that specialize in interim positions: Patina Solutions which has been acquired by Korn Ferry, Bolster, and StevenDouglas.

Listen to the most recent episode

Check out these podcast episodes:

I would listen to all three of these episodes and check out the websites.

Unretirement to Something New

We have had multiple members of the Career Pivot Community pivot to something new.

I want you to check out my post 3 Career Pivot Community Members Pivoted to an Encore Career.

Business Coach

Alec Arons spent much of his career in corporate finance consulting. He retired in 2019 with the thought that he wanted to become a business coach. At the same time, he wanted to reignite his passion for photography which he had dropped many years earlier.

Alec’s financial goals are to make enough money to fund his photography and other non-work interests.

Alec has built out a very nice portfolio of coaching and teaching. He has been teaching an online course for a professional association in the area of financial audits. It is something he can do in his sleep even when the work is sporadic, however, it pays well.

City Council Member

David Jenkins spent much of his career inside and outside of state and local government. He also served in the US Army National Guard for 38 years, which included being deployed to Bosnia about 20 years ago.

When David came to the Career Pivot community 3 plus years ago, he was the CEO of the Southern Maryland Association of REALTORS®. This was a job that David did not enjoy and finally left to pursue a couple of different pursuits. He taught an online business course for the University of Maryland. He also became a Business Consultant for his local Small Business Development Center(SBDC).

David spent the next two years volunteering on several committees for the town of La Plata Maryland. He started a blog on the importance of placemaking and planning for our communities. David has learned a lot of new skills since making a career change.

He was then told by several people inside and outside of the La Plata town government that he should run for a town council seat. He did… and he WON!

You can listen to him tell his story on running his first political campaign in the podcast episode Learning How to Run a Successful Political Campaign in the 2nd Half of Life [Podcast].

Author

Russ Eanes has had an eclectic career. Before coming to the Career Pivot community he spent 11 years running MennoMedia, which is the publishing arm of the Mennonite Church. As time went on he drew weary of shrinking the organization and laying off friends. In 2018, he laid himself off and took a year to find himself. I love his comment to me where he said, “I had to admit I was lost before I could find a new direction”.

He hiked the Camino Santiago pilgrimage and decided to write a book about it. He wrote The Walk of a Lifetime: 500 Miles on the Camino de Santiago. He self-published the book through Amazon KDP service and IngramSpark in September of 2019.

Russ took a full time job with GetSetUp leading their travel team. That has since been reduced to a part time position as he works on his next book about walking a different pilgrim path, the Way of St. Francis in Italy.

Others

I want you to listen to the podcast episodes:

Both Adele and Deborah are pursuing passions that are quite different from their past lives.

There is no One Way of Doing It

I left my last tech startup in 2011, to start Career Pivot. I spent several years doing the planning, but it has now evolved from a full time coaching practice to a part-time encore career.

Never has there been a better time to plan an unretirement. Even going into a recession, companies will be still be looking to fill interim positions.

Downturns are often the best time to start something new.

What is stopping you from your unretirement?

Marc Miller

Like What Your Read? Get Career Pivot Insights

Do You Need Help With ...

Check out our Help Center where you have access to 14 different content portals.