Does what you have already done still count?
Before a career pivot, internal move, or other change in context, ask four questions.
Your experience does not all travel. It does not all disappear either. The work is to tell the difference.
The complete four-question guide is on this page. You can also download the original eight-page PDF for keeping or printing.
Some of it does. Let’s get precise about what.
What travels?
Judgment you have exercised.
Patterns you have learned to recognize.
Ways of solving problems you have already demonstrated.
These can remain useful when the employer, function, industry, or role changes.
What does not?
Company-specific systems.
Relationship-based access and influence.
Internal language.
Assumptions that made you effective there but may mean little somewhere else.
Some experience is context-bound.
What can you prove?
The next context cannot see your internal reputation.
It needs evidence another person can understand and trust.
What must you relearn?
A new context brings different technical requirements, language, and constraints.
Being capable of learning them is not the same as already knowing them.
Adjacent experience is not automatic qualification.
Your job is not to pretend the gap does not exist.
Make your experience clear enough for the next context to judge the gap accurately.