How Long Does It Take to Get a Corporate Job After Ministry? Timelines, Trends & Realistic Expectations for Former Pastors

♟️ STRATEGY SHIFT: How long will it take to transition from ministry to secular?

How long will the job search take me?

The expectation of how long it takes to get a job is critical to planning.

If you hope to get a job 3 months from now, and it comes in 4 months, you'll be disappointed.

If you hope to get a job 6 months from now, and it comes in 4 months, you'll be elated!

So it is important to take a realistic look at two important timelines:

1. When do you ideally want to get a job by?

2. When is the last possible date you need to get a new job by?

And then compare them to reality.

If you Google, "how long does it take to get a job in 2024?" (2024 will have more complete data than 2025), you'll see that it can take anywhere from 3, 5, or even up to 8 months to get a new job, depending on factors like 

• How much you want to make 

• The type of job

• The availability of the job based on your location

• If you have that experience or not.

A recruiter friend of mine shared with me that a good expectation is that you should allocate between 1 month of job searching for every $10,000 you want to make on your salary.

So here's the math.

Do you need to make $100,000 in your next job?

$100,000 / $10,000 = 10

10 x 1 month = 10 months of job searching!

Those numbers might be painful, but set your expectations accordingly, and you might actually be able to get there faster. 

Side note, if you see $100K and you're thinking, "holy cow, is that even possible??"

I wrote a newsletter a couple of weeks ago on how much someone with a ministry background can make in a marketplace job.

Can I speed up the process?

The short answer is, yes.

In the first newsletter I ever wrote, I covered the 10-step method that we use in the Interview Accelerator to help people get jobs that value their ministry experience and support their family, faster.

There is a better way to search for a job.

The numbers speak for themselves.

Applying cold online gives you a 1-3% chance of getting an interview... per application.

Those are bad odds.

But getting an introduction to the hiring manager makes you 15x more likely to get an interview.

1-3% or 15-45%?

More work on the front end, for sure.

But way better (and faster results on the back end).

So let’s talk about trends for specific job types.

Here are the trends I'm seeing for specific job types.

If you want to transition into one of the following jobs, here are some expectations you can realistically set for yourself

• Entry-level sales: 2-3 months

• Account Exec: 4-6 months

• Operations: 4-7 months

• Project Management: 4-8 months

• Employee onboarding: 6-9 months

• Marketing or Communications: 5-9 months

• Creative roles: 5-9 months

• Learning/Training and Development: 5-12 months

• University work: 9-12 months

• Professor: 12+ months minimum (unless you're already employed or alumni)

• Start your own executive or other coaching business: 12 months minimum to make up your salary + bigger risk

Set your expectations to reality.

Measure your mental and emotional energy.

Do the things that lead to interviews and not just cold apply online.

You’ve got this.