12 - Moving Forward with a Bridge Job Class with host Karen Styles

This episode is the audio access to my class, Moving Forward With a Bridge Job.

I taught this virtual class live in the spring of 2021; I’m sharing it here because a bridge job can be a great step in building an intentional career, and we can all benefit from a perspective shift on bridge jobs. It has been edited from the original for audio context.

I’m your host, Karen Styles, Career + Life Coach and owner of Flow + Fire Coaching. Ready to create your Intentional Career? Schedule a call with me.

Interview Highlights:

[01:25] Welcome, introduction, and overview of the class.

[04:00] What is a bridge job? My definition.

[05:43] Why would someone take a bridge job? Possible reasons.

[09:22] What should you look for in a bridge job? 2 important aspects. If you don’t have them, you’re not in a bridge job, you’re in a hamster wheel job.

[12:46] What could a bridge job give you (beyond time and money)?

[16:08] How long should a person stay in a bridge job?

[20:43] Reasons NOT to take a bridge job.

[22:33] How I ended up in a bridge job at Starbucks.

[27:25] My most recent full-time job - which ended up being a bridge job.

[31:34] Consider the specifics that will be important in defining your bridge job.

[32:56] Question & Response: 

What motivated you to do your bridge job? 

What advice do you usually give to job seekers? 

How do I tone down my resume when I may be overqualified?

[38:10] Conclusion

Resources

• Flow + Fire Coaching - Website | Instagram

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Transcription - Moving Forward with a Bridge Job Class with host Karen Styles

Karen: I’m Karen Styles and this is the Intentional Career Podcast. I talk to all kinds of people who take all kinds of paths to work they love. I'm a career and life coach and owner of Flow +Fire coaching. 

If you’re ready to create your intentional career with the support of a coach, schedule a call with me. There’s a link in the show notes or go to intentionalcareer.co and click the blue “Schedule a Call” button.

In today's episode, I'm doing something a little bit different and I'm sharing the audio of a class that I gave earlier this spring. And the class was titled, "Moving Forward With a Bridge Job." 

Sometimes we all need a job that is not our ideal job, but it actually can move us forward in our careers. And I believe that a bridge job can be a part of creating your intentional career. So it's time to remove some of the shame around it and start to explore just what might be available to us if we look a little bit closer at this bridge job option. 

I do hope you enjoy listening to this class. And if you have any comments, feel free to send me an email podcast@flowandfire.com Now here's the class, "Moving Forward With a Bridge Job." 

Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for being here today for this talk, this small class on moving forward with a bridge job.

I'm really excited that you are here. I think this is a really important topic because there's a lot of people right now that have bridge jobs. There's a lot of people right now that need bridge jobs. And, I think it's really time to be done with the shame of it. And I think shifting our thinking around bridge jobs can really help us move forward in a more productive way.

So, let's talk about it. Let's normalize it and learn about how we can use bridge jobs in a really intentional way to build our careers. 

First of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Karen Styles. If you haven't met me before, I think most of you I've met. Maybe you found me on social media, some folks are here from LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram and my email newsletter, but I'm so glad you're here. 

I am a career and life coach. In case you're wondering why I'm not just a career coach, part of that is because sometimes career coach titles get really narrowed to job search. And I really see career coaching as a much bigger look at, what do you want your career to look like within your life? And when people are making changes in their careers, some of the things they encounter, it's not only challenges with the application process or interviewing, but it's also about mindset. Coming up against things in your mind that say, I can't do that. I can't make that change. And that's where life coaching and career coaching really overlap for me. I help folks discover and do work that lights them up. And my website is flowandfire.com. You were probably there to register for this class. So thank you for being here today. 

So what we're going to cover today are these main things. First of all, what is a bridge job? Why take a bridge job? What to look for in a bridge job? 

Also, I'm going to share with you a couple of the bridge jobs that I've had and how those have been important steps in my career, even though some of them weren't the things that I wanted at the beginning.

Let's look at this first, what is a bridge job? 

Now, if you've been following around some of my social media posts, maybe you've seen my definition, but, I would like to hear from you, what do you think is a bridge job? 

From my chat here: a role that helps you move from one to another. Yep. What else? Transition. Something to tide you over. Hmm. Yep. Great example. A lesser job than your previous job. Yeah, it might be. Right. It might be. A job that transitions. Great. These are excellent. Backup job. 

Here's my definition: A bridge job is a position that you take, even though it's not your dream job, maybe it's not exactly perfect for your career, but you choose to take it anyways and it's usually temporary in some way. And the key is that it moves you from one place to another. And I think that metaphor of a bridge is really important because some folks, some career coaches, even, advise survival jobs.

And I just, to be honest, I don't like that term. I hope that you will do more than survive in your job. Right? And not every role is maybe going to be the perfect thing, but it should move you from one place to another. The idea of a bridge is that you go across it. You're not staying there forever and we're aiming higher than just surviving, right? We need to do more than that. 

Let me ask you this, and maybe you can add this in the chat. Why would somebody take a bridge job? What are some reasons someone might need a bridge job? 

 Bills, bills, bills. Yup. That's a good way to put it. Financial support. Training for the next one. Avoid boredom and despair. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think what we're kind of seeing here too, is that we might all have different reasons, right? 

So here are some possible reasons that I've identified. You might need to escape a toxic job or a draining job.  It might be like, I don't know... I need the next position. I don't know exactly what that is, but I have to get away from where I am now. So if that's something extremely toxic, maybe it's an escape. But you still need it to take you somewhere. And it could be that a job is maybe a role that was okay in the past, but now feels draining. It seems to take all of your energy and you want to have your energy for other things in your life versus just that role. Maybe that's a good reason to look for a bridge job. 

Second one. Oh, I don't know - maybe there was a global pandemic and you lost your job. You were laid off through no fault of your own. You were at a company you were planning to have a career with, and now you don't. Maybe you just need some things to bridge a gap. Totally legitimate. There's a lot of people in 2021 who are in that situation. 

Sometimes it might even be to take a break from job hunting. I've had friends and clients who were trying so hard and were getting so exhausted by trying to find a similar role, after getting laid off and just weren't able to find a job that was similar in their same career path. And a bridge job allowed them to take a break because it does take a lot of energy to sell yourself, to apply, to interview, to tailor your resumes. All of those things take a ton of energy and maybe if there's a job that you know you can get, it might give you a break from job hunting. 

Another reason is that maybe you can't do your dream job right now. For whatever reason that might be. You need some training, I'm trying to think of an example. Maybe you want to be a bookkeeper, but you need to take some courses. So you can't do that right now and you need some other work in the meantime while you're taking tha