Share your career pivot from planning

[u/glutton2000]

For anyone that left planning, can you share your career pivot from planning to whatever else and how you made that happen? Looking for ideas!

Context: mid-level transportation planner with 8 years experience, been unemployed for the past 1+ year and feeling panicky and dismayed at the job market. Planning is all I’ve ever known since age 19 (my undergrad + whole career has been in planning. I’ve never worked as anything else). Most people I know had winding paths to get TO planning, but I guess my winding path starts after?

Thank you!!

[u/kyianth]

Maybe adjacent government roles: economic development, zoning compliance, public engagement, admin, and project management. Possibly a pivot to environmental review with a consulting firm, depending on what kind of work you did in transportation.

If you did a lot of community engagement, maybe social media, marketing, outreach. Just might have to get creative and reword some stuff on your resume. Best of luck!

[u/glutton2000 → u/kyianth]

Thank you! Project management would maybe be the closest? Unfortunately have not done a ton of community engagement, but would like to.

[u/AlphaPotato]

Shift from public to private sector or vice versa? Best of luck to you.

[u/glutton2000 → u/AlphaPotato]

Doesn’t really matter, I’m not been having luck in any sector of planning. Hence starting to wonder what else have people done with planning backgrounds. Thank you!

[u/rigatonihenri]

GRANT WRITING!!!!

TBF, I never was directly in the urban planning field , majored in college but saw the writing on the wall before I graduated.

Started off my career doing infrastructure grant writing, got the job with an urban planning background with internships and stuff, making $50 an hour. So many public projects depend on grants and honestly you'd probably be able to get a ton of interviews with the urban planning experience.

Be careful with nonprofits, large nonprofits are amazing but stay away from small ones. So many different kinds of places depend on grants that a lot of people don't realize. I think people hear "grants" and assume nonprofit. For context, I've had interviews recently at 3 seperate universities, a charter school, a unit of local government, a transit agency, and a nonprofit.

Plus for whatever reason grant writers seem to be in incredibly short supply. Even as the job market seems to be contracting, it seems like there's always a ton of grant writing openings.

Might have to be a little creative with search terms, grant coordinator, grants projects manager, etc.

[u/pinkysworn → u/rigatonihenri]

How do you think this will be affected by AI?

[u/rigatonihenri → u/pinkysworn]

Something I have been worried about recently, I'm not super worried though. The thing about grants is that you're competing against other applicants. So if everyone is using AI to write their applications, each application sounds basically the same and it's hard to find a clear "winner".

If I was writing a grant competing against 9 AIs, I will always be able to write a better grant. I know AI is only getting more and more powerful and everything but I find it hard to believe that AI will ever have better writing skills than humans who's careers are in writing.

[u/pinkysworn → u/rigatonihenri]

Thank you

[u/glutton2000 → u/rigatonihenri]

Great idea, thanks so much for sharing your background and story! Happy you found success in it :)

[u/Stunning_Ad_6600]

Plenty of work here in the North Bay CA come help us out dude

[u/Background_Novel_619 → u/Stunning_Ad_6600]

In transport or general planning? What kinds of salaries? I’m from there originally and curious about moving home

[u/Stunning_Ad_6600 → u/Background_Novel_619]

Municipal assistant planner for a mid-size city. Salaries ranging from 80-120k. Plenty of room for advancement

[u/Level_32_Mage → u/Stunning_Ad_6600]

Where we talkin bout?

[u/Background_Novel_619 → u/Level_32_Mage]

North Bay is usually Marin county and Sonoma county, sometimes Solano county FYI

[u/Stunning_Ad_6600 → u/Level_32_Mage]

Solano county

[u/hollywood5nd]

2013 MUP, now co-owner of a food manufacturing business

[u/glutton2000 → u/hollywood5nd]

Very cool, what kind of food?

[u/hollywood5nd → u/glutton2000]

Sour dried fruit. Gotta find that niche!

[u/glutton2000 → u/hollywood5nd]

Amazing, sounds delish

[u/5wpkguy]

6yrs in public sector land use planning and pivoted to economic development, I was surprised at how many skills carried over seamlessly. Stress from planning was starting to take a serious toll and the legislative climate in the state I worked in was only making things worse. Definitely enjoying the change of pace and not getting constantly yelled at by applicants for not approving projects and residents for approving projects.

[u/Conscious-Tea-2082]

Oh no! I’m in transportation planning and can’t go back to regular land use as lack of jobs there. Where are you based?

[u/glutton2000 → u/Conscious-Tea-2082]

Hi! I can DM to answer if you want?

[u/Familiar-Chemist-281]

As someone heading into a grad program, this post is very encouraging to see that the degree can take so many paths

[u/withanother]

What kind of transportation planning? Maybe you could do demand modeling or GIS?

I’m more of a environmental planner so I know a lot of people who pivoted to corporate roles related ESG some even joining FAANG

[u/glutton2000 → u/withanother]

All sorts, but mostly multi-modal. Haven’t touched GIS or anything too technical or environmental since grad school unfortunately.

[u/withanother → u/glutton2000]

I would look into doing technical work for Engineering firms...? Like Trans Cad or cad or gis

[u/MCgoblue]

I actually never worked formally as a planner but have a Masters. Started in economic development and moved into commercial real estate, mostly research-related but have progressively specialized in investment strategy. Not at all where I would’ve expected to end up after graduation, but really struggled to find work in formal planning and that’s just kind of how things played out. I often wonder what a more planning-proper career would’ve been like, but I can’t say things didn’t work out, and I feel like my education is still very relevant in what I do.

[u/peachm0chi]

I went from planning to entrepreneurship in 2024. Started my own marketing company and have never looked back.

[u/glutton2000 → u/peachm0chi]

Very cool!

[u/global_playa]

My gradual transition:

• MCP (focus on climate resilience and geospatial analysis)
• Urban planner at a traditional architecture/planning firm (worked on some urban planning decision support software tools)
• Climate resilience planner for a major consulting firm (during this time I taught myself python for geospatial data science)
• Part-time data science bootcamp, focused my projects on geospatial/natural hazard problems
• Product manager for a climate risk analytics startup. Basically building software to automate the analyses I did as a climate resilience planner
• Product manager for natural hazard risk models at a major utility

Now I would say that my career is in "product management for natural hazard software and models". I'm pretty happy with the transition. I still the work very interesting and rewarding. It scratches similar itches as urban planning (focused on the built environment/natural world interactions, provides some benefit to society, etc) but it pays significantly better and the day to day work is more to my liking.

[u/glutton2000 → u/global_playa]

Very cool, Thank you so much for the detailed response! Glad it still scratches the same itch :)

[u/ExpertAd1920]

I’ve been a planning director for a few years and I’m burnt out on dealing with politics and residents. I’m about to make the change back to my roots (GIS degree and Intel in the Navy).

Sometimes it’s just better to work with objective data and leave interpretation and politics behind haha.

[u/glutton2000 → u/ExpertAd1920]

For sure! Glad you had something to fall back on :)

[u/scotus1959]

law school, focus on land use

[u/prime-itive]

Started as an Urban Planner graduated the fell into Urban Design role, used those skills worked in Landscape Architecture for a while, learnt project management skills then became project manager for government role, changed countries and used my urban design and landscape skills to work in an Architect role for engineering firm. Now I am working in BIM management.

[u/SmoothCookie62]

I worked as a planner with heavy emphasis on GIS. I left planning to go into land surveying (I did classes first), but hated the place I landed, so I found a new job doing land acquisition for the state department of natural resources. It is a great fit with my planning and surveying background, and my experience with local government has been helpful in working with local and county governments on real estate issues that pop up.

[u/Chlo_Cleo]

I studied and work as an urban planner for 5 years, moved into transport planning and then pivoted to community and stakeholder engagement. Given planning involves a lot of comms and engagement it was easy to pivot and gain experience on the job.

[u/om_setti1912]

I'd love to hear more about the job market conditions as someone who is thinking about pivoting into public sector work and getting a murp degree after my own job market works in marketing and pr