23: How being bilingual can boost your career change

When Julia Abrantes moved from NYC to Atlanta, she assumed she’d have no problem finding another job as a legal secretary with her 30 years experience. To her surprise, she had a hard time landing a job in her new city and ultimately, she had to make an unexpected career switch in her 50s.

In this episode of Career Switch Podcast, Julia shares how she eventually became a licensed insurance agent, a new career she was willing to try for six months. Today, Julia helps State Farm clients with their home, auto and renters insurance needs—in English and Spanish—and truly enjoys it.


Resources:

Indeed.com: How to Become an Insurance Agent

Idealist.org: The Benefits of Being Bilingual

Fluentu.com: Reap These Benefits of Being Bilingual!

Monster.com: The Value of Spanish in the Workplace



More episodes for making a career change after age 50:
Ep 4: Aged out: Making a career switch at over 50
Ep 16: Starting a new career after 50
Ep 18: The pros and cons of being a full-time author
Ep 21: A side hustle results in a career switch
Ep 32: How to make a career change after 50
Ep 41: Pursuing your passion at any age

Music credit: TimMoor from Pixabay 

Podcast info:
What's your career switch? What do you think about this episode and the show? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Transcript

Lixandra: Hi, everyone. I'm Lixandra Urresta, and this is Career Switch Podcast. This show is here to encourage you to take action with whatever career change you're considering or working on. Maybe you're trying to switch industries or professions or break out on your own and start a business. In some episodes, I talk to people who've made their own career switch, whether by choice or circumstance. They share the good, the bad, and the truth about their journey, including what worked for them and what didn't. In other episodes, I speak with experts who offer their best career advice on challenges that can come up during the process of making a career change. After all, it takes guts to switch things up, and it's not easy. However, it is possible. 

So I hope you hear something in this episode, an idea, a suggestion, a piece of advice that'll spur you into action with your own career switch, whether it's taking that first bold step or trying something new. Welcome. I'm glad you're here. 

When Julia Abrantes moved from New York City to Atlanta, she assumed she'd have no problem getting another job as a legal secretary. Why would she? She had worked at a leading law firm for nearly 30 years, had excellent references from top attorneys, and she was bilingual. To her surprise, Julia had a hard time landing a job in her new city. And ultimately, she had to make an unexpected career switch. In this episode, Julia opens up about the months she spent trying to secure a position and how she eventually became a licensed insurance agent, a new career she'd never considered until it was offered to her. She now helps state farm clients with their home, auto and renters insurance needs in English and Spanish and truly enjoys it. Her career switch has also led to other exciting opportunities that she'll tell us about. 

Hi, Julia. Thanks for joining us today. So you were a legal secretary in New York city before you moved to Atlanta in 2017. What happened once you moved that led to your career switch?

Julia: When we moved to Atlanta in 2017, I had it scheduled to be out of work for about a year. I had enough savings and everything like that.

Lixandra: You wanted this time off because you'd bought a house and we're planning to renovate.

Julia: I wanted to get a house settled, deal with the contractors and all that kind of stuff. And also getting to driving because as a New Yorker, I didn't drive. So I had to get myself acclimated to driving again. You know, something I hadn't really done in 25 years. So when the time came to get a job, I thought, Hey, I have 30 years of legal secretary experience. It should be very easy for me to get a position. I'm about five minutes from the local courthouse. And so I thought I could get a position with one of the local attorneys. However, after months and months of trying to get a position, it turned out that I wasn't qualified. 30 years of being a legal secretary wasn't enough. I needed a paralegal certificate. Being a paralegal is almost like being an attorney. You're doing all the grunt work, all the research, all that kind of stuff without appearing in front of a judging court. And the hours are very long and it's not what I wanted to do.

Lixandra: You were in your fifties when you moved. Did you consider going back to school, which you would have had to do to become a paralegal?

Julia: At my age, I didn't want to go back to school. I was hoping that my skills would be transferable and I would just be able to carry on with what I had done over the past 30 years.

Lixandra: Tell us about your 30 years experience that made you think you'd have no problem finding a new job at a law firm when you moved to Atlanta.

Julia: Yeah. So I worked for 30 years with the largest law firm in the United States, and I worked for one of the top arbitrators in the world. And I worked with him for 25 of the 30 years that I worked as a legal secretary. I was bilingual. I had. lots of contacts with high level customers and clients all around the world in both English and Spanish. I always had favorable reviews while at work. Everything was always on the up and up. And my LinkedIn profile had references and still has references on it from various people that I've worked with in different levels, be it my supervisor or the attorneys that I worked with. I really thought I was going to be, you know, OK with finding a position here once I moved. But that wasn't the case.

Lixandra: Once you applied to law firms and heard back that you needed to be a paralegal, did you know what else you could pursue?

Julia: I didn't know what I could pursue. So then I just started applying for everything. I applied for every basic office, administrative assistant, executive assistant position. It didn't matter what genre the company was involved with. I was trying, I tried in every, every company that I could. find that was within reasonable distance, you know, to travel to. When I say reasonable distance, I meant less than an hour of travel time each way.

Lixandra: And how did your search go?

Julia: It was really difficult. I did find one position in August of 2018, and I worked for about 13 months at Atlanta Flooring and Design Centers as a production coordinator. And that was basically data entry I would work with the warehouse, with the installers and with the onsite supervisors. We were doing all the flooring in the house, which was kind of a lot of fun, especially considering I had just done it in my own house. So now he's seeing it from the other side, which was really cool. So I worked there for about 13 months and then got laid off. So I was at Atlanta flooring the summer of 2018 through September of 2019.

Lixandra: Did you get to use your Spanish skills at that job?

Julia: I did. That was a great bonus because a lot of the onsite supervisors, uh, the installers were Spanish speaking. And so they loved calling me and being able to talk with me in Spanish about whatever was going on in the house, whether, you know, there were issues with supplies or issues with one of the installers. It was really great. Our connections back and forth.

Lixandra: So what did you do after your layoff in September, 2019?

Julia: I said, okay, well, I knew it was getting close to the holidays and it was going to be difficult, but still every day I would come into my home office and I would apply for jobs every single day. I applied at various other companies that were also associated with flooring since I had a little bit more knowledge of it after working in there for the past year. I just applied everywhere, everywhere. And when I mean everywhere, I applied at Walmart. I applied at Target, at Kohl's, Hobby Lobby. I figured, okay, I can get a little part-time job while I'm still looking for full-time work. But then nobody hired. Not even during the holidays, which I was completely surprised at in Florida because I thought, okay, somebody's going to call me and want me to work the midnight shift or the overnight shift stocking shelves, but it didn't happen. And then the pandemic hit.

Lixandra: Okay. So fast forward to December, 2020, when you applied for a receptionist opening for State Farm Insurance, where you met your new supervisor, Kendrick.

Julia: I applied at State Farm Corporate. I also applied at a local State Farm agency for the receptionist position where I am now. Did all the preliminary interviews and assessment exams. And then I went in for an in-person interview and. He said to me, I don't think I want you for the receptionist position. I think I may want you for something else. And he talked to me about being an insurance agent, which wasn't really what I wanted to do because I wanted more of a steady salary, but I said, okay, you know, we can talk about it. And we talked about it. And then he said, okay, he decided to go in another direction. I understood. And that was that, but then he called me back a few weeks later. And asked if I was still available, which I was. And he had me come back in and he says, yeah, I want to bring you in as the receptionist, but I know you have skills and I can see that I want to be able to move you up rather quickly. So he brought me in starting part time. I was only there three days a week. And he said, I want to make you eventually the office manager. He didn't put a timeline to it, but he did say, you know, it was something that we wanted to look forward to. And I, I liked that idea, you know, being the office manager. And so I went in and started working February 1st of 2021.

Lixandra: Now the catch was that you needed to get your insurance license to work in the office. How did you feel about that?

Julia: Yeah, that was a little daunting because it was taking a training course. The good thing was that it's a go at your own pace. It wasn't like I had to go to school and be in classes. So I would work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the office. Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would work in my home office doing the training modules. And it was about 40 hours of coursework, but at my own pace. So some of it I got through rather quickly. Some of the courses I had to redo because you got a little quiz at the end of it. So I had to go through it again.

Lixandra: Just to clarify, even as a receptionist, you had to be licensed because you were talking to clients about different types of insurance.

Julia: That's just part of the insurance industry. If you're picking up the phone and you're telling somebody about auto or home or whatever policies, you have to have a license. I am the first person that people speak to when they call into the office. I answer 90% of the phone calls.

Lixandra: And you get to use your Spanish here too.

Julia: Absolutely. And there's always that one or two calls that come through. Somebody speak in Spanish, you know, no speak English, somebody's Spanish. And right away, I see Buenos Dias. Me llamo Julia. Como te puede ayudar? You know, and I, and I start with them.

Lixandra: Do you like that you're able to use your Spanish?

Julia: I do. I really do. I think it's a connection. Whether we're somebody that knows each other. Or whether it's somebody that you just meet, we have that language together. It just gives us an instant connection. It's something that I really enjoy.

Lixandra: Let's go back for a little bit to your training. What exactly did it involve?

Julia: As part of my receptionist position, I had to take the licensing for, um, property and casualty, which covers homeowners, auto policies, renter's policies, that kind of stuff. For about two and a half months, I work, come home from work, cook dinner, then study every day from eight to 10. It was about 40 hours of coursework, but those 40 hours obviously stretched into a lot more of that, just repeating it and going through the quizzes at the end of each module. I think there were probably about 15 modules involved in what I had to study for. So as I would get through each module, I take the quiz at the end of it. And Kendrick, my boss, could see what my scores were every time I was taking the test. And so I had to get at least an 80 before I moved on to the next section. So sometimes it'd be frustrating because I'd get 76 or 78, and then I'd have to go through the whole thing again. the modules were always mixing up the questions and changing the questions. So it wasn't like I was doing the same questions over and over again. I learned a lot, a lot about insurance, about homeowners policies, renters policies, things that I thought I knew as a homeowner and as a car owner, but I didn't know. And I'm so glad that I know so much more about it. So even though it took a while to get through all the modules and learning everything, I was successful in taking and passing the test on the first try. In April, 2021, I became a licensed insurance agent.

Lixandra: Congratulations, Julia. What about the cost of the training? How is that covered?

Julia: So I had to pay for the course and I had to pay for the exam. Once I passed everything, then my boss paid me. He reimbursed me for it. But, um, I had to put that money up front, which is a little more than $300, almost $400 that I had to put up front.

Lixandra: Okay, Julia. So when you look back, considering becoming a licensed insurance agent was a new career that was offered to you, you didn't pursue it. What did you think back then versus now about making this career switch?

Julia: I have to say. Going from 30 years of being in legal and working all the years that I worked in advertising in my early, early years of work, I didn't think I was going to like it. I didn't think that I would fall in love with working in insurance because you think of it as such a pushy thing. You know, when you see the commercials are everywhere. I didn't want to be that person. I did say to myself, I'm going to give it at least six months, give it a try and see where it goes. And here I am today. When you help somebody to understand about the products that are available and you make a difference in their lives because of how you're helping them be prepared for themselves and their families, it's a beautiful thing. So I really like it.

Lixandra: Yeah. Did you start changing your mind while taking the course or was it once you started working in the office with clients?

Julia: I'm going to say after I took the course. While I took it, it was just mind boggling. There was so much information because I was doing in-office training on their software and the little processes that I had to do each day as the customers called in. And then coming home and learning everything that I had to learn through the coursework that I was taking, it was a lot. It was daunting. And I was like, I'm not going to make this. I'm not going to make it. I said, I'm going to have to start all over again. But I said, I have to do this. I have to give this at least six months. I have to push for at least six months and try and get it. And then it just clicked. If you would have spoken to me in February or March of last year, or even April, when I was still doing the coursework, I might have hesitated a little bit. I would have said, OK, hold on. Let me look this up. But now, if you call and you ask me, hey, what is uninsured motorist? Or what is this kind of coverage? Or do I need this on my household coverage? I can answer very quickly and very confidently, which is something I didn't have in the beginning, that confidence.

Lixandra: Yeah. So let's talk about that. Now that it's been a year, you got your license last April. How is it going?

Julia: Yeah. Well, since I got my license, my boss is very confident in me and the work that I do. I am the eyes and ears when he's not there. Actually at the end of January. He promoted me from office representative to office manager. That happened a lot quicker than I anticipated. And now I am involved in the interviewing process for new people that we want to bring into our team. My boss allows me on Wednesdays to run my own meetings with the team. And I talk to them about everything. I talk to them about work ethics. I talk to them about work dress code. you know, how you should come dress for work. Even though we don't see people doesn't mean we come in jeans and T-shirts to work. We still dress professionally every day because, you know, we are a profession. And this is how Kendrick, my boss, wants the office run. He also lets me do a lot of outreach to our Latino customers just to give them a call and like, Hey, it's Julia calling from your insurance agency. You know, I want to set up an appointment to go through your policies to see if you're missing anything. Because a lot of people, especially during the pandemic to save money, really trimmed down their coverages. And now that they're back, they're able to protect themselves and their families better.

Lixandra: So you're basically your boss's right hand. I am.

Julia: Yeah. He knows he has something good and he doesn't want it to go anywhere. He doesn't want me to go anywhere.

Lixandra: So what's in store for you in the future with this new career?

Julia: I've given my boss the confidence to say that he wants to open up a second office and have me helping him to manage both offices. This is another reason why we are building our team and growing our team. And I'm helping him with even the interview process for new employees.

Lixandra: Nice. So there's more growth coming your way.

Julia: More growth coming and he tells me I'm not allowed to leave until I die. I'm 59 and I'll be 60 in September. He doesn't want to hear that I'm retiring in seven years.

Lixandra: Speaking of retirement, now that you're a licensed insurance agent, you can work until whenever.

Julia: I can, yes. As long as I keep my license up. Every two years I have to do continuing education, which is just a few modules at work.

Lixandra: So Julia, after everything you went through, you ended up making an unexpected career switch. What did you learn about yourself?

Julia: I'm resilient. I have to say I was as low as I could possibly go. I was so down thinking what didn't I do right when I moved down here? Why couldn't I find a job? Why wasn't anyone hiring me? I couldn't understand what I did incorrectly. And it wasn't what I did incorrectly. It's just the market where we are. and the lifestyle that I want to live. I also learned that you're never too old to start over. It's just a matter of dedicating yourself to it, rising up to the challenge, I should say. And even though it took me a little bit longer to get the licensing, I got it done and I passed it on the first try.

Lixandra: As we wrap up, since we talked about using your Spanish in that first job at the flooring company and now at State Farm, would you say being bilingual is a skill career changers should take advantage of?

Julia: Absolutely. I mean, if you have that second language, even if it's not completely fluent, sometimes you may only need conversational. You may not need to read or you may not need to type of translation. And I will admit there are some times when I use Google translate to do, give me a quick translation in Spanish and then I'll fix it. These tools are available to you and they can help you with securing that next position.

Lixandra: Great. What other advice do you have for our listeners who are making their career switch?

Julia: Don't give up. Think outside of the box. You have a ton of transferable skills. Take those transferable skills and apply elsewhere in many different fields and many industries, and then go and be the best that you can be.

Lixandra: Thanks to Julia Abrantes for sharing her career switch journey with us today. You can find links to the resources mentioned in this episode and more helpful information in the show notes and on our website, careerswitchpod.com. 

So what's your career switch? Are you motivated to take action after listening to this episode? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. We'd love to know, along with any feedback you have about the show. Let us know too, if you'd like to be a guest. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn at careerswitchpod. And please rate, review, and share with your friends and colleagues. It'll help get the show out there. Thanks for listening today. Till next time.