Happy New Year, everyone, and welcome to 2026. The new year has a way of making people pause. You start to think about the things you want to change, maybe some things you want to leave behind, and maybe some things you want to bring forward. And if you're entering this year at a point where you're between roles or identities or plans, then you're not alone. Welcome to Life Between Titles. I'm your host, Savan. This video is not about looking back. Really about how we approach moving forward. Let me start with saying something that might sound familiar to a lot of you. So you're seven months unemployed. You've sent 200 plus applications. You've had a couple of interviews, maybe a couple of conversations, but yet you haven't had a single offer. And every day you have the same routine. You get your cup of coffee, you open your laptop. You check the job boards, you tailor your resumes and cover letters, you submit them, and you repeat that process over and over again. But what people rarely talk about is the hidden costs of being unemployed. And it's not just the emotional costs, but the financial costs. So I thought I'd take some time to do a breakdown of what those actual costs are. Let's just say you invest in LinkedIn premium, which is about 30 bucks a month. And you do that for seven months. That's 210 bucks. And your resume is dated. So you hire a professional resume writer. Couple back and forth sessions is about 350 bucks. Your interviewing skills are a little bit rusty. You get a coach. maybe two sessions for 400 bucks. And then you go and look for good cover letter templates and AI machines to help you. Maybe that's 45 bucks a month. ATS optimization software runs around, let's just say 95 to 97 bucks. The coffee meetings, transportation, parking, and the time spent trying to network in person adds another, let's just say 145 bucks. So we're looking at anywhere between $1,200 to $1,400 for that seven month period. And that aligns with reports from groups like the National Employment Law Project and Glassdoor, which have pointed out how job seekers are increasingly paying out of pocket simply to remain visible in this crowded market. And the advice job seekers hear is always the same. Invest in yourself. get your resume to stand out, get professional help. All of that gets it done. But yet still nothing moves. And it's not because of a lack of skill and it's not because of poor interviews. It's definitely not because of lack of effort. In my opinion, it's because the system itself is frozen. So by that seven months, The question stopped being, why am I not getting hired? And becomes, what's wrong with me? Here's the truth you need to hear as you start 2026. It's not you. It is the system. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment is hovering around 4.6%. For younger workers and recent graduates, it's meaningfully higher. But unemployment numbers alone don't tell the real story. Data from Indeed hiring labs show employer response rates are dramatically lower than they were in 2021, even when job postings increase. Most roles are listed, but fewer people are actually getting hired. Economists call this low hire, no fire. Companies are not confident enough to hire aggressively, but are not worried enough to lay people off. But everything just sits there. There's no momentum and there's no movement. And forecasts from the Federal Reserve, JP Morgan, and Indeed suggest hiring growth will remain stagnant throughout 2026. Most employers really just plan to maintain current hiring levels rather than increasing them. year the same way you did in 2018 or 2021, you're already behind the market. That's why the strategy has to change in 2026. Here's what works now. First, stop mass applying to jobs. Turn off those saved searches, stop treating job boards as rituals. Second, narrow your focus. Pick 10 companies you genuinely care about and start to invest in them. Look to see the types of things they need and the type of people that you're connected with replace scrolling with research. What are they building? What problems are they facing? What has changed recently for them? Third, identify one person, one real person. at each company. someone doing the actual work, not HR, not a recruiter, but a practitioner, and ask for their perspective. conversations really creates advocates. This works because of how hiring actually happens. Research cited by the LinkedIn economic graph and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows roughly 70 to 85 % of roles are filled through referrals, internal movement, or even direct sourcing before they're even placed or posted publicly. LinkedIn also shows candidates referred by employees are several times more likely to be hired than cold applicants. That's a crazy, crazy statistic. if you spend all day on those job boards, you're competing for the smallest and most crowded slice of opportunity. And the best roles are often filled quietly. With the renewed focus on relationship building, roles appear that would never show up online and your name gets passed and interviews happen. And all this without ever submitting an application online. So you've got the same skillset, the same resume, you're the same person, where you're just approaching it a bit differently. So as you start 2026, this is the mindset shift that matters. The market's not getting any easier, everyone. Applying harder is not the answer. Volume's not the answer. Adaption is. So here's to a great 2026 for everybody. I appreciate you for listening. This is Savan. Let's get it.
One Year Since I Left the Pentagon. Here's What Actually Happened.
Exactly one year after leaving his post with the Department of Defense, Savan tells the full story of how it went down—what he built, what he lost, and what he finally understands about the life between titles.
Key Takeaways
- →One year is enough time to see the shape of what happened: Savan waited a year before telling the full story of leaving the DoD—not because he wasn't ready but because he needed enough distance to see it clearly. Time is a necessary ingredient in honest reflection.
- →Leaving a high-status position carries a specific kind of grief: The Department of Defense is one of the most prestigious institutional affiliations in the world. Leaving it—even voluntarily, even for good reasons—involves grieving a version of yourself that was defined by that association.
- →The story of how something ended shapes the story of what comes next: How Savan narrates his departure determines what lessons he extracts and what future he builds. He chose to tell it honestly—including the parts that weren't clean or triumphant—because that honesty is more useful than a polished version.
- →One year of building something independently is its own credential: Savan reflects on what a year of podcast production, community building, and content creation actually produced—and argues that the intangible credentials of an independent year may be more meaningful than the official ones that came before.
- →The life between titles is not a gap—it's a chapter: The founding insight of this podcast is now lived experience. Savan's year outside the institution proved that the in-between is a legitimate, generative place to be—not a waiting room but a destination.
- →What you build in the absence of a title reveals what you actually value: Without a job description or performance review to organize his effort, Savan discovered what he cared about through what he actually did. The reveal is instructive: the work chose him as much as he chose the work.
- →The people who stayed in his life during the transition are the real network: A year of departure has a sorting effect on relationships. Savan reflects on who showed up, who disappeared, and what that map says about the difference between professional acquaintances and genuine community.
Q&A
Questions answered in this episode
What happened when Savan Kong left the Department of Defense?
Savan tells the full story in this episode—the circumstances of the departure, the emotional aftermath, and what the year that followed actually looked like. The short version: it was harder than expected, more generative than expected, and clearer in retrospect than it was in real time.
How do you explain a year outside traditional employment to future employers?
Savan's answer: own it with specificity. What did you build? What did you learn? Who did you serve? A year of genuine independent work produces real outputs—relationships, content, self-knowledge—that translate directly into what employers want, if you've done the work of articulating them.
What is it like to leave a prestigious government position?
Grief, first. The prestige of an institution becomes part of your identity, and leaving strips that away. Then, gradually, a different kind of clarity: about what the institution gave you, what it cost you, and what you want that can't be given by any institution at all.
How long does it take to find your footing after leaving a major career?
Savan's honest answer is: more than a year, and probably a different kind of 'footing' than you expected. You don't return to a previous state—you build a new one. That's harder and better than the word 'recovery' implies.
What did you learn about yourself from building a podcast independently?
That the work has to matter to you before it can matter to anyone else. Savan built Life Between Titles without institutional backing, guaranteed audience, or performance reviews—and discovered that his motivation was more durable than he expected precisely because the mission was genuinely his own.
Is leaving a stable government career worth it?
Savan refuses to generalize. For him, in this moment, with his specific circumstances—yes. For someone in different circumstances—maybe not. The question he suggests asking instead: what is staying costing you that you're not accounting for? The cost of staying is often underestimated because it's invisible and gradual.
How do you rebuild professional identity outside an institution?
Through doing, not through planning. Savan built his new identity episode by episode, conversation by conversation, relationship by relationship. There was no moment of arrival—just accumulated evidence that something real was being built.
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