54: Paving your way in a new field (like AI)

Jim Fina made his career switch in the late 90s when new media was becoming more mainstream and integrating itself into our daily lives. Jim, a textbook editor at Scholastic, gradually transitioned into project management at a time when it was relatively new in tech. 

Jim's experience from 20-plus years ago mirrors where we are today with artificial intelligence. Just like the web in the 90s, AI is quickly going mainstream and reshaping how we live and work. 

In this episode, Jim shares how he paved his way in a new field and how you can do the same in AI or any other growing industry. 

Episode Highlights:

• Exploring new media after a layoff

• Telling colleagues you're interested in other areas

• Defining a role when it's still new in an industry

• How to switch into a field that's still being defined, like AI

• The skills you need to get your foot in the door

• Working through comparing yourself to others 

• Do certifications help?

• The one thing every interview question boils down to

• What a hiring manager really wants to hear from you in an interview

• How to answer a question if you don't know that answer

• Using a layoff to get out of a rut

• Making a career switch in multiple steps

Resources Mentioned: 
What Color is Your Parachute? by Richard N. Bolles

Want more advice? Check out these additional episodes:

Ep 38: How to transition from corporate to non-profit

Ep 16: Breaking into a new industry in your 50s

Music credit: TimMoor from Pixabay

Podcast info:
What's your career switch? What do you think about this episode and the show? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Transcript

Lixandra: Hi, everyone. I'm Lixandra Urresta, and this is Career Switch Podcast. This show is here to encourage you to take action with whatever career change you're considering or working on. Maybe you're trying to switch industries or professions or break out on your own and start a business. In some episodes, I talk to people who've made their own career switch, whether by choice or circumstance. They share the good, the bad, and the truth about their journey, including what worked for them and what didn't. In other episodes, I speak with experts who offer their best career advice on challenges that can come up during the process of making a career change. After all, it takes guts to switch things up, and it's not easy. However, it is possible. So I hope you hear something in this episode, an idea, a suggestion, a piece of advice that'll spur you into action with your own career switch, whether it's taking that first bold step or trying something new. Welcome. I'm glad you're here. 

Jim Fina made his career switch in the late 90s. Back then, websites, blogs, and other types of new media were starting to go mainstream and integrate themselves into our everyday lives. Jim was a textbook editor at Scholastic, who over the next few years, gradually transitioned into project management, a relatively new role in the tech world. 

I wanted to have Jim as a guest because his experience from 20 plus years ago mirrors where we are today with artificial intelligence. Just like the web in the 90s, AI is quickly becoming mainstream and reshaping the way we live and work. In this episode, Jim shares how he defined his own path in a new space and how you can do the same and pave your way into AI or any other growing industry. 

Hi, Jim. Thanks for joining us today. Let's dive in. What were you doing before your career switch in the late 90s?

Jim: I was an editor at Scholastic. I worked in the textbook industry, elementary textbook industry. So I worked on like math series and reading series, textbooks, you know, like kindergarten through eighth grade, that sort of stuff. And then I got laid off, which was, uh, kind of a blessing really, because I was sort of getting tired of doing what I was doing. It just wasn't fulfilling. It just didn't seem like enough. So I thought about it. New media was the big phrase at the time in the late nineties. The web was not a big thing yet. It was sort of emerging at the time. But there was, you know, like CD-ROMs or things like that were really big. And that fascinated me. I was always sort of interested in whatever was happening in technology anyway. So I thought, well, maybe I kind of want to do something like that. And maybe I want to do something that isn't just editing in that field. And a different position opened up in their new media division at Scholastic, which was a relatively new division. And somebody who thought I was good recommended me for this job and I applied for it. And it was something called Editorial Systems Manager, which was a little bit editorial, but more sort of systems manager, you know, I was like the person who made schedules and who connected editorial to design and production. And so I kind of got into that and that opened up this new world.

Lixandra: How so?

Jim: The big thing was they were moving from the AOL platform to HTML on creating a website for themselves. So this was all brand new and I really knew nothing about that, but that kind of didn't matter because nobody really knew very much about that. And so I got to learn as I went along and that, you know, it wasn't an issue that I didn't have a lot of, you know, credentials in that because nobody did at that point. So that started my move. It started me away from being just an editor and publishing into doing something else.

Lixandra: A big part of making a career switch is getting someone to recommend you, right? So how did your colleague at Scholastic refer you to the position in the media department?

Jim: You know, I had made a lot of good relationships with all different groups. This person was a VP there and, you know, she knew what I was able to do. I guess I had kind of made mention to people too that, Oh, I'm interested in new media. Cause I also knew that Scholastic had a new media department. So I made mention of that. And when that came up, somebody had asked this VP, you know, yeah, we need somebody who might know like the editorial process. And so she thought of me and here I had only been laid off for like a week and a half. And so I immediately went in and interviewed and interviewed a couple of times, you know, whatever, and got the job.

Lixandra: Yeah. That's a great example of how letting people know you're interested in other areas works. Okay. So take us into how you transitioned into project management.

Jim: I sort of kept on defining my job with the people, you know, with my boss. and just kept on using whatever talents I had. I'm not a designer at all, but I was very good working with the designers that we had. And I ended up supervising that group and then supervising the production group, which is the HTML coders. So I became what was called a production manager, which is I was in charge of designing production groups there. And then somebody I worked with who had a pretty high position moved to Kaplan test prep, the test prep company and hired me as production manager there. So I got into that and then I worked with Kaplan for a while. Again, I was sort of supervising editorial and design and production.

Lixandra: Now, Jim, when we first spoke about doing this episode, something that caught my ear was that you said that project management was relatively a new thing when you got into it. Can you tell us about that?

Jim: Project management, I mean, project management has always kind of been a thing in many different fields. You always hear, you know, for the longest time, project management, you know, for building. You need a project manager when you're building, for example. But it was sort of new in, in the tech world. And as somebody who was in charge of a production group, you know, we'd have multiple projects happening at the same time. We'd be creating content, but we'd also be creating the underlying platform for the content. So there were always these tech upgrade projects that we were trying to do. Cause we built it all from scratch at that point. And I've been reading about this. I was just educating myself and realized, you know, there is this thing that you get a project manager and they come in and they're people who are paying attention to all the little pieces and make sure that they all come together at the right time. And things stay, you know, on deadline and on budget. And because we have multiple projects, I can't do that for every single project. I was sort of doing that for every single project, but some things I could give more attention to than others. It was just. Impossible. So I kind of was trying to sell this idea of project management to the people that I worked with and they didn't quite understand it again. It's still pretty new, right? The web is still pretty new. It's been out for a while. This was, you know, several. five or six years, we're now in the two thousands, but really how to put it together still wasn't, you know, wasn't quite figured out yet. So nobody could quite understand why do you need a project manager? Why, you know, everybody should just do their own thing and, and then it'll come together and trying to explain how. When it's really complex, like it is with tech projects, things don't just come together every, you know, Not everybody understands what the others are doing. You have to have somebody who can help. So I sort of got that started and then I got laid off again. So getting laid off as often as it's turned out to be a good turning point for me.

Lixandra: And this second layoff was while you were at Kaplan, right?

Jim: Yeah. I had moved from the test prep group to, uh, an online, uh, university that they were creating. So again, I was sort of like, where do I go from here? I'm not quite sure. What will I do next? I've got a variety of skills here. What am I, what am I going to do? And I had hired somebody. uh, as a freelancer to do user interface design for a project when I was at Kaplan. And actually I'd worked with that person also when I was at Scholastic. And so I'd become kind of friends with him. I'd hired him multiple times and, and I bumped into him one day and we went out and had lunch and chatted and he was just running his own business, doing multiple projects and said, I could use some help. You know, if you want to come and do some freelance work for me. So I did do that. Um, he had, um, he had multiple projects happening at Visa doing tech projects. At the time, the tech projects were with Blackberries. Cause that was huge. That was the thing. But yeah, I started doing more sort of project management stuff and user interface design stuff. You know, I went from, I know this is important. I kind of know how it works to this is how it works. Now I'm doing it and I'm learning it. It was still new enough in this field that you could learn it as you go. So again, I kind of got lucky in that way. And I worked there for a while, but then it meant that. When that gig was over, I suddenly had these project management skills and I was able to get multiple jobs after that as a project manager.

Lixandra: And now you've been a project manager for 20 years or so. And like we were saying, you got into project management when it was still new within tech. So here we are today with AI. And sure, AI has been around now for a few years, but positions are being restructured. Do you see any parallels or can you relate your experience to developing your position to what we have to do now with AI in the picture?

Jim: Yeah, I think. I think whenever you have a new gestalt, you know, coming along something new, it could be a new process. It could be a new technology. Could be, you know, a new sort of cultural move or whatever. It hasn't been defined yet. It hasn't sort of gone through so many iterations that it's like, this is the way you do it. And I'm only going to hire people who know this by heart. When you don't have that yet, really there's a lot of room for somebody who just has good skills in general from some other place. I had good organizational skills. I had good management skills. I had good communication skills, which turned out to be maybe the most key thing in becoming a project manager. So I was able to kind of use those talents to something where it was still a little bit inchoate. People didn't quite know how things came together in this field. So there was room for me to learn and in a way room for me to help define, uh, how things would become, you know, I just, I stayed current with what other people were doing. You know, I was reading logs about in books about project management and user experience and things like that. So I was able to bring those in as if they were mine, you know, which they weren't, but I was able to bring those in. And I think that's true today. I mean, there's a lot of new things that are coming up that haven't been defined yet. And if you can figure out where your skills can fit into that, it doesn't matter that you're not fully knowledgeable about AI, for example. What's more important is that you know what your strengths are and that you can look at, well, what's missing in this field that I can bring to it. And often people need bodies as things grow and they don't know exactly what they need. And if you can interview well, for example, you can kind of say, you know, you tell me a little bit about what you're doing. And then I can tell you how I can help you with this. You know, I don't have this lengthy history with AI, but here's how you're trying to put things together. You don't need somebody with a lengthy history of AI. You need somebody who can help you deliver this by having these skills. You know, so for people who are looking at something like AI or whatever, you know, that's new. There's room. There's room in there. You can help define what you're going to be.

Lixandra: Yeah, you can craft your own path in a new field.

Jim: Right. And once you get your foot in the door, then you're there and you're absorbing what's happening and you're learning it and you become part of the knowledge base of wherever you're at. So it's really getting your foot in the door. Find a way to get your foot in the door. And you can do that by just looking at what you can bring to the table and what you can give them that they need. And you don't have to give them everything that they need. You have to give them just one good thing that they need. And if you're just, in general, a pleasant person to work with, then you can get your foot in the door that way.

Lixandra: Yeah, great, great. So Jim, any career change has its inevitable ups and downs, right? What was one of your challenges with your career switch?

Jim: There's sort of a confidence challenge because you are going into something new. I mean, I certainly had some feelings of, you know, it's imposter syndrome. You know, I don't really know this and other people must know this or know it better than I do. And there were, of course, people who did. Even going into something like the web, which was really new, there were still people who had already been doing things, you know, for a couple of years. And so they really knew a lot more than I did. That was a big challenge, was just overcoming my own doubts about being able to make a switch, to do something different. Because it felt to me at the time, like, well, I'm an expert in this. I'm an expert in editing stuff. And this job really has no editing in it. So, you know, what am I, why would they hire me? You know, why would, why would they do that? I think that's probably a challenge for a lot of people that they go into things with, you know, I just, why would you hire me? But if you've been good at your job previously, it probably wasn't just because you did one thing really well. If you were successful in something previously, then you really have developed multiple skills that made you successful. And I didn't realize that until I just automatically did certain things in the new job that I would always do in my previous job, but they seemed, they worked and they seemed kind of new for this position to have those skills. Those skills suddenly became way more important than being able to edit. Cause that wasn't an issue in this new thing that I was doing.

Lixandra: And now that you've been doing project management for so long, for anyone out there who may be interested in it, would you recommend they look into getting certified?

Jim: Well, certification will help you make a cut. because there will be people who are just looking, well, is this person certified? Nope, then I've got 300 submissions. Let's cut out those people and just go for the ones with certification. So we can help you make the first cut, I think. But I found that it's sort of an interviewing skill. When you are interviewing, no matter what somebody asks you, What they're really asking you is, will I be OK if I hire you? Please make me feel comfortable that I'm hiring the right person. And as long as you answer that question underneath in any form, you will you will do well in an interview. So if there's something that they ask you and you don't know the answer to it, I would just say, I don't know the answer to that, but here's how I would find out. Or I'm really good at learning things quickly. Or, you know, I would, I would always try to make them feel comfortable. That was sort of the number one goal. in any interview that I went to was make the other person feel like, no, I know what I'm doing. When I don't know something, I figure it out. I learn about it. I, you know, I'm a problem solver. I won't, you know, give you extra work. I'll take on the work and do it. So that's just something to remember. I just, in any interview for anything, that that's really, everybody's got that same underlying question, no matter what they ask you. That's really what they want to know.

Lixandra: I like that, so taking this attitude of like, I got you, like, don't worry about it. Yeah, exactly.

Jim: I mean, as long as you can answer that way, it doesn't matter if you don't actually know a specific answer to a question. Answer in a way that says, you know, don't fake it, just say, okay, here's how I would go about figuring that out. There'll always be something that you don't know once you get into a job, even if you know it, Because you've done it before, you don't know how this new organization does things. They might do things a little bit differently. So you're still going to have to figure something out even when you know stuff.

Lixandra: Well, that's a great transition into your advice for our listeners who are working on their career change. So what other advice do you have for us?

Jim: What happened to me was I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do. So I actually used what color is your parachute? And one of the things that it said in there that was really helpful to me was figure out what you like the most. Do you like to work with ideas? Do you like to work with things, with your hands, whatever? Do you like to work with people? And I realized, OK, editing is working with ideas. But I really like working with people. That was way more. I mean, that little shift that I made for a brief time at Scholastic, where I was being a manager, just gave me so much more joy. And it's because I was working with people way more than working with ideas. So I would say, you know, pay attention to that. Think about just because you're doing something now, you're going to switch and you're not quite sure. I mean, that's, this is a good question to ask yourself. It's, you know, where, what brings you joy? You know, what, where, where is it in that realm of things? Maybe you're already working with people and that's really annoying you and you actually would rather work with ideas. So know that when you go to make a change, know that about yourself.

Lixandra: Yeah, I read that book too in the 90s, I think. I'm sure it's still around, so I'll link it in the show notes. So Jim, earlier you mentioned that your layoff from Scholastic was a blessing. And when we first spoke, you said that the best things happened when you lost your job. You went through at least two layoffs, right? And layoffs are such a norm these days. It's actually when a lot of people decide to make a career switch. So tell us more about that.

Jim: Well, I don't know if it's because it was just the right moment in my life, but in both cases, well, definitely in the first situation, it just gave me a moment to stop and say, okay, I know I don't want to keep doing what I've been doing. And that's, I think, when I read what color is your parachute, for example. But so it gave me that moment to say, OK, since I have to get a new job, I don't have to get the same one right now. Let me think about this. Maybe there is something else. And I knew that there were there was this new field called New Media at the time that you know, was still undefined, somewhat undefined. So I really kind of thought about, okay, that sounds interesting to me. I actually, I have some desire about that. I would be happy to go and try to find a job in that realm rather than just get the same kind of job again. I think that gave me a chance, you can get stuck sometimes. You know, I'm doing this, I'm getting paid. It's good money, whatever it is, you know, I can just keep doing this. It's easy. It's familiar and it's easy. So I can take that easy route and getting laid off meant, okay, well now I don't have my easy route anymore. I don't have to try to make another route the same way. That happened both times. The second time was harder. because I wasn't in a frame of mind where I knew, oh, I want to go into this. So it took longer. And there was sort of a more fallow period there for me where I wasn't, I was really just trying to figure something out. But it still worked the same way. It just, it got me out of a rut in both situations. And if you're the kind of person who's in that place where you're running to make a career change, you're probably in a rut at this point. That's why you want to make the career changes, my guess.

Lixandra: Yeah. You're stuck somehow, right? Like either mentally or with your duties.

Jim: And I think also it kind of came in stages for me. I mean, I think that's in a way that's sort of a tip too. You don't have to make one big change all at once. You can make multiple changes. You can do something new and learn something from that. And then learn a little bit more about something else that you might be interested in and make another change. Cause that's really how it worked for me is that I sort of made multiple changes and that was the right path for me because I had to keep finding out new possibilities to get to the place that seemed right for me. I had to keep learning, oh, well, there's also this. Oh, I could do that too. Oh, and then there's this, I can do that. So it wasn't a one-step thing for me. It was a multiple step thing.

Lixandra: Right. You went through what? Like at least three positions before you?

Jim: Three or four, really, when you think about it. I mean, my first switch, I didn't know what project management was yet. When I made that switch to do new media stuff and became, you know, a production manager, I still didn't even know what project management was. I had to get yet another position and then start to learn about what project management was and start to believe that there's a reason for it and understand why it's an important thing. And then another job where I started to actually do it.

Lixandra: I love that your career switch from 20 plus years ago can help career changers today. Any other advice that you want to share before we wrap up?

Jim: So when you, when you enter a new space, when you are making the switch, there's no dumb question. Okay. So ask questions, get information. And it's easy to think, well, I'll look stupid. I don't know the answer to this, or I don't know exactly what's going on. No, everybody, everybody will appreciate it much more if you stop and ask questions because you're working on it. Clearly, you're thinking about it. You're trying to solve an issue by getting as much information as you can. So do that.

Lixandra: Thanks to Jim Fina for being our guest today. Check out the show notes for additional episodes on how to break into a new field. You can find links to the resources mentioned in this episode and more helpful information in the show notes and on our website, careerswitchpod.com. 

So what's your career switch? Are you motivated to take action after listening to this episode? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. We'd love to know, along with any feedback you have about the show. Let us know too, if you'd like to be a guest. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn at careerswitchpod. And please rate, review, and share with your friends and colleagues. It'll help get the show out there. Thanks for listening today. Till next time.