In addition to the enormous human toll the 2020 coronavirus pandemic has had throughout the world, the virus has also had a significant impact on people’s careers. Some have seen their jobs eliminated, work projects cancelled, roles furloughed, industries turned upside down, and businesses completely shut down.

After thinking really carefully about who I wanted to feature in this episode of Career Relaunch, I decided that financial controller Liya Dashkina would be the perfect individual. Liya, who’s also a listener to Career Relaunch, decided a few months ago to resign from her job in London and move back to Australia to be with her partner while continuing to work remotely. Her three-month notice period was supposed to wrap up at the end of March, after which, she was planning to explore new career options in Australia.

Then, the pandemic hit.

The sudden uncertainty and upheaval she’s now facing in her career is similar to other stories I’ve heard from clients and listeners who have suddenly had their career plans upended.

I hope you find this conversation helpful as you figure out how to bounce back from whatever setbacks you may be experiencing in your own career during this COVID-19 crisis.

Key Career Insights

1. During times of uncertainty, you can only focus on what you can control.
2. Building relationships takes time. Sometimes, you need to go into it without counting on the fact anything will necessarily come out of it.
3. To be truly successful, you have to be truly invested in what you’re doing.
4. Try to figure out what drives you, what makes you tick, and what gets you out of bed in the morning rather than just “doing what you love.”
5. Now that the world has stopped due to coronavirus, it actually enables an opportunity for you to get creative and reassess where you want to take your life & career.

Tweetables to Share

Related Resources

• Liya mentioned the Business of Fashion is hosting some online events you may be interested in checking out, especially during the coronavirus lockdown.
• If you are looking for some career resources to guide you during the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve compiled useful articles on job hunting and virtual interviewing on my COVID-19 career resources page.

Liya requested I share this poem excerpt, related to some of the things we discussed during our conversation.

If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. The adventure is its own reward — but it’s necessarily dangerous, having both negative and positive possibilities, all of them beyond control.
-The Power of Myth- Joseph Campbell

Listener Challenge