Pivot Your Experience into Strategic Tech Consulting
Position your domain expertise for independent or agency-level tech consulting and strategic AI implementation advisory.
Rung 5 / 7
Typical Starting Point
90 Days
Reposition · Proof · Outreach
Typical position · rung 5 of 7
Where does Tech Consulting work usually sit on the exposure ladder?
Domain expertise packaged as advisory is one of the more AI-resistant knowledge-work categories today.
- 1Routine work only — rule-based, high-volume, scripted
- 2Routine plus real domain judgement, still done by hand
- 3Mixed routine and non-routine; adaptability rests on people skills
- 4Names specialist software used as a user — CRM, ERP, dashboards, design suites
- 5Quotes a process they automated or measurably improved
- 6Names AI or ML tooling in work they shipped, or leads work others depend on
- 7Sets AI adoption direction at organisation scale
This is where the work in these roles typically lands against the seven published criteria. It is a classification, not a measurement — and it is not your rung. Yours is decided by what your own CV can evidence, not by your job title: two people with the same title land on different rungs, and that gap is the whole point. The free scan quotes the line from your CV that puts you where it puts you.
Why This Pivot Works
Deep domain expertise packaged as advisory resists automation better than most knowledge work, because clients pay for someone who can be held personally accountable for a recommendation. This pivot repositions years of judgment built inside one industry as paid strategic counsel for companies adopting AI without understanding that industry's operational reality. The credibility is the product. AI fluency just keeps it current.
Your First 90 Days Pivoting Out of Tech Consulting
Days 1-30 — Reposition
An advisor repositions by publishing a point of view. Write the industry brief only you could write — where AI adoption actually breaks inside your sector's operations, named processes and all. The resume becomes secondary; the brief is what makes decades of domain experience legible as a paid product.
Days 31-60 — Proof
Package your judgment into a diagnostic: a structured AI-readiness assessment framework for companies in your sector, complete with the questions you would ask, the red flags you would check, and a sample findings memo from one anonymized walkthrough. Consulting buyers purchase frameworks — the framework is the proof.
Days 61-90 — Outreach
Sell the diagnostic before you sell yourself. Offer the assessment to two or three companies in your network at a modest fixed fee; a completed engagement plus its findings memo converts warm contacts into references, and references — not credentials — are what price advisory work upward.
Honestly: Pass on this if irregular income makes you anxious. Advisory work means selling the next engagement while still delivering the current one.
The order is the same for everyone
Which bullets, which keywords, which roles — that depends on your actual resume.
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Key Transferable Competencies mapped by AI
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