Career Currents
- Job Market
- Career Growth
Dear Friends,
Summer brings longer days and a sense of forward motion. As Career Coach of the Outer Harbor Consulting enters its first full season, I feel grateful for the encouragement so many of you have shared.
Thank you to those who have trusted me with your career journeys and to those who have referred friends and colleagues. Your confidence means a great deal.
“What feels overwhelming alone becomes clearer with a steady partner beside you.”
Enjoy the beginning of summer.
Warmly,
David Bolz
Career Coach
One Trend Shaping the 2026 Job Market
What experienced professionals seeking career growth need to know right now
The job market doesn’t stand still. Understanding the deeper currents can mean the difference between drifting and navigating with purpose. One important trend I am seeing in my coaching practice and across the hiring landscape this year is skills-based hiring.
Skills-Based Hiring Is Replacing the Credential Checklist
Employers are shifting from experience-based hiring to skills-first evaluation. Roles now blend responsibilities that once lived in separate functions. Organizations rely more on work samples, structured interviews, and skill assessments that map directly to outcomes.
For mid-career professionals, this is both a challenge and an opportunity. Your years of experience matter less as a line on a resume and more as a portfolio of demonstrated capabilities.
Your Move: Audit your skills inventory. For each role you target, identify the top five skills required and prepare concrete examples that show how you deliver results.
The market rewards clarity, intentionality, and the ability to articulate your value. That’s exactly where coaching makes a difference. At Outer Harbor Consulting, we help you translate decades of experience into a compelling, forward-looking narrative. Your purpose sharpens your direction. You do more than search for a job. You navigate toward the right job and improve your life.
Quick Tips & Resources
Update Your LinkedIn Headline.Your headline is prime real estate – 120 characters that every recruiter and connection sees first. Lead with your value: what you do, helping who, and achieving what. Example: Operations Leader. Helping Growth-Stage Companies Scale with Discipline and Heart.
Summer Reading Pick. Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. Focuses on career reinvention and examines possible futures, reframing “stuck” as a design problem, and building your way forward instead of overthinking it. A great companion for anyone in transition.
Beyond the Career: Learning from No Ordinary Time
I have been reading No Ordinary Timeby Doris Kearns Goodwin. It is a vivid portrait of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt during the tense years before and during the Second World War. Goodwin shows a nation that wrestles with uncertainty. She shows a president who carries the weight of a global crisis while he works to keep the country steady at home. She also reveals Eleanor’s strong influence as she urges the nation to widen its sense of responsibility and justice.
What stays with me is the daily effort that democracy requires. The Roosevelts faced division, fear, and fatigue. These pressures feel familiar today. Their story reminds me that our challenges are not new. The work of meeting them is not new either.
The book also offers a clear lesson about work. During the war years, the job market changed overnight. Factories retooled. Women stepped into new roles. Workers moved across the country to find opportunities. After victory, the nation had to shift again.
Those who thrived were the ones who chose to learn, adapt, and step into something new. That truth still holds. Careers grow when we stay curious, keep learning, and remain open to the next chapter.
Would Love to Hear From You
Schedule a convenient time to catch up: Book a time with David
And if someone in your world could benefit from career support, please feel free to send them my way.
© 2026 CareerCOACH™ Services of the Outer Harbor · Buffalo, NY. Career Currents is a monthly newsletter. If you know someone considering a career change, please forward it to them.
Newsletter
Want to receive these sooner?
Get David’s newsletter in your inbox the day it goes out.
No spam. Leave the list anytime.