Pivot from the Public to the Private Sector
Episode 503 | Author: Emilie Aries
Leverage your public sector experience in the private sector job market.
In March, we saw the number of layoffs skyrocket nationwide. This was due in large part to Elon Musk’s DOGE slashing more than 216,000 government jobs, leaving an astonishing number of public servants out of work.
If you or someone you know was impacted, this episode is for you. Sure, there are municipal, county, and state public sector job boards to scour. If, however, you’re part of the crowd who is tired of being maligned as “government waste” and considering a major pivot, I have four tips for making a transition from public to private sector as seamless as possible.
Learn the lingo
Maybe you scanned a few private sector jobs and thought to yourself, “I don’t have any skills for this industry!” Assuming you aren’t planning a total career change, this is often simply a translation issue, not a professional deficit on your part.
In the private sector, the work you’ve been doing in “workforce development,” say, might be called “talent development” or “learning and development” instead. Your constituent service skills might be recharacterized as customer service, and your impressive ability to drive impact or compliance must be connected to how you would drive revenue or growth.
I recommend reading through a ton of job postings in your target industry—even ones outside your region -- to better understand the verbiage being used to describe the most desirable skills. When you dig into the specifics, you’ll likely discover that you already have many of them; you just need to do some relabeling. Or in the worst case, if you do find yourself lacking, you’ll learn what skills gaps you can work to close. boss
Another great way to start picking up the private sector language is to meet with people already in it. Prioritize informational interviews and ask them to describe their work and maybe even to read through your resume or LinkedIn profile to suggest some terminology updates.
Highlight those transferable skills
It’s understandable to feel at a bit of a loss when making a significant transition like this, but don’t sell yourself short. Once you’re familiar with this new vocabulary, scour your experience for the most transferable skills you bring to the table. Plenty of soft skills, like project and people management, bridge both sectors with ease. And technical prowess in public data analysis, for example, is a boon to private companies looking to drive revenue.
Jumpstart this reassessment of your resume with my free masterclass, How to Confidently Communicate Your Skills in the Job Search. Using the CAR method (Challenge, Action, Results), I’ll help you write the most compelling story of how your past experience translates to future success.
Make your public service past part of the package
The public sector has been getting a lot of flak lately. That could leave you reticent to admit you hail from this part of the workforce, but don’t paint over your past experience—own it.
Beyond your highly transferable skills, the very fact that you worked in the public sector can be a huge selling point for private companies. These two industries overlap a lot, and your knowledge of navigating public policy, or keeping up with compliance, or maintaining public–private partnerships makes you a valuable asset for private organizations that need to play nice with the public sector. Think about the kinds of private companies you interacted with in your old job. You’re a public sector whisperer now, and they’ll be lucky to have you.
Tighten up your resume
That 10-page tome you last submitted on USAJobs is a good first draft, but when you start applying to the private sector, you’ll need to shave it down a lot. Modern resumes are rarely more than one or two pages, so be selective. Include what’s most relevant to the job you’re applying for, tweak the language as needed, cut the rest, and hit send.
I’m here for you if you need more support. Check out the episodes on how to format your resume for the modern job search and four resume rules that no longer apply.
Now, I want to hear from you! If you were laid off from the public sector recently, what’s the job market looking like for you right now? And if you’ve made this public to private sector pivot already, what worked for you? Log in to the Courage Community on Facebook or join us in our group on LinkedIn to share your tips and experience so we can all keep lifting as we climb!
Related Links From Today’s Episode:
FREE Masterclass: How to Confidently Communicate Your Skills in the Job Search
Episode 501, “4 Best Practices to Navigate Layoff Anxiety & Uncertainty”
Episode 239, “How to Format Your Resume for the Modern Job Search”
Episode 391, “Four Resume Rules That No Longer Apply”
Reuters, US announced job cuts surge in March on Doge hit, recruitment firm Challenger says
HIRED: our Job Search Accelerator
Get on-demand access to HIRED, our job search accelerator:
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[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 503. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up and today I want to talk about pivoting from the public to the private sector.
[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
This is particularly top of mind because just last month In March of 2025, we saw layoffs surge led by the public sector. This is thanks largely to Elon Musk and his ad hoc team known as DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency, which led the amount of layoffs last month with more than 216,000 government employees who were fired from their jobs. This is according to outplacement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas. So 216,000 government employees got their pink slip last month. And there are massive concerns about possible recession or other layoffs and just market volatility to follow as part of the current administration's uncertainty when it comes to things like international trade and domestic economic policy.
So today's episode is for you. If you were among those 216,000 employees that the government just axed, or for someone you know and love who might benefit from listening to this episode. Because, no matter how noble and respected and important I feel that government servants are, that public service careers truly are, this might be not a great time to pivot from one public sector position to the next. Even though you've got options. We all know that there are public sector roles on the city and municipal and county and state levels that might be a better option than the federal government right now. But if you are sick of being frankly maligned in the press and called government waste, and the jokes around government inefficiency feel very much at your expense, I don't blame you one bit if you are looking at how green the grass might be on the other side in the private sector.
So, today's episode is going to get into a few practical tips for how to recharacterize your experience to make that job search and make that transition from the public to the private sector as seamless as possible.
The first thing you're going to need to do is learn the lingo. I need you to deeply understand the vernacular used by professionals in your target industry. Now, this is true for anyone, but it's particularly relevant for those who are recharacterizing and describing their past experiences in the public sector in a way that the private sector can value and understand.
For instance, if you've been working in workforce development, you might be able to realistically and honestly recharacterize that work as focusing on Things like talent development, or employee development, or learning and development, workforce development, and all those other kinds of developments are not that different at the end of the day. So thinking about how you might describe and in the public sector, you might describe things like career coaching and leadership development differently than in the private sector. That'll help you figure out which jobs to target in the private sector and how you might need to rewrite your resume without exaggeration, without bluster, without just, you know, lying on your resume. But actually using the language of your target industry can really help make those connections between your past and the career that you want for your future.
So, again, if you've been focusing on things like constituent services, you might need to lean into those customer service skills. If you've been driving impact or focusing on compliance in your government sector role, you might need to be able to describe how you would drive revenue or drive growth in a private sector role instead. One of the best ways to learn the lingo of your target audience is to read a ton of job descriptions. So remove the geographic filters so you can read as many job descriptions that are actively hiring, even if they're hiring in geographic regions you don't want to move to. Your goal in doing so is just to get as much insight into how they're using language to describe the target skills that they're looking for, so you can better align your past experiences with the language that will land you those kinds of positions.
Another way to do this effectively is to have as many conversations as you can with active practitioners in your target industry. So grab a cup of coffee or conduct an online informational interview, if need be, to listen actively to how those practitioners describe their skills and the work at hand. You can also send them your resume or your LinkedIn profile to ask them to take a look and make sure the language you're using to describe your skills lands with them and their audience.
When making the transition from the public to the private sector, you've got to emphasize your transferable skills. So lean into those soft skills that will be relevant in either sector. Things like project management, program management, or people management. Emphasize your leadership skills and how you brought them to the table in the public sector, because they absolutely transfer over into how you can be successful in the private sector. And the same could be said for your more technical skills as well. Did you do work like data analysis and data visualization? If so, connect those past skills and experiences to how you would drive revenue and growth in the private sector roles that you're applying for.
I offer a great free workshop on how to do this effectively using something known as the CAR Method, which is an acronym that stands for Challenge, Action and Results. It's all about telling the full story about how your past experiences would transfer into future success in the role. You can get on Demand Access now to my free masterclass How To Confidently Communicate Your Skills In The Job Search via today’s show notes.
When making your case as a public servant to transition into the private sector, don't hide your past experiences, but frame them as a value add. Frame your public service as an asset to this private company's success in the future. In other words, don't try to hide it or deny it. Make your past experience work for you. For starters, think about the kinds of companies that would find your expertise in government valuable to them. Navigating the public policy landscape, or keeping up with the latest compliance, or even just navigating public private relationships or public private partnerships. Think about all the private companies you may have interfaced with as a public sector employee through the vendors that our government works with. Those are the kinds of private sector companies that will find people with past experience in government to be particularly valuable.
So try to make that an asset that you bring to the table by focusing on companies who are directly impacted by the public policy landscape and therefore would find your skills and experience in the public sector valuable to their business's bottom line. It's not always possible, depending on the role that you're applying for, but whenever you can characterize your public sector experience as a strength, not a deficit.
My final tip for navigating a career transition from the public to private sector is to tighten up your resume. That ten page resume may have been okay for the government sector and for applying to jobs via USA jobs, but that is not the norm in the private sector. You're going to want to call back and be selective about the experiences you share that are particularly relevant to the role. These days you're going to want to aim for a one to two page resume for the private sector, tops. Maybe three if it feels particularly relevant and worthwhile. But unless you're applying to the higher education space, which normalizes longer CV’s much like the government space does, you're going to want to keep it concise, keep it brief, keep it tight, and really focus on what's relevant and transferable and cut the rest. I know that can be hard to do.
So I've dropped links in today's show notes to a few relevant podcast episodes. One on How To Format Your Resume For The Modern Job Search and another on Four Resume Rules That No Longer Apply In The Modern Era. So we've got tons more resources for you on crafting your resume for the modern job search, particularly on how to make that transition from one industry to the next.
You can find links to all the past episodes and resources, including that free masterclass that I mentioned in today's show notes and corresponding blog post bossedup.org/episode503 and as always, I want to hear from you. Let's keep the conversation going after the episode in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook or in our Bossed Up Group on LinkedIn. I want to learn if you've successfully navigated a pivot from the public to the private sector. What worked best for you? What might you add to today's episode that I didn't cover? And if you were one of the hundreds of thousands of people who found themselves laid off from their public sector job last month?
[OUTRO MUSIC IN]
What is the market like for you right now? We want to hear from you and we're here to support you in making sure that you stick your landing like a boss. And as always, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose and together let's lift as we climb.
[OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]
