Tara Kermiet | Burnout & Career Pivot Coach

Start here

What have you been telling yourself?

This is a taste of how coaching with me works. You say what’s going on, and I answer. Pick the closest one.

Tara in an armchair, talking on the phone — I’m a text away.

tara kermietPreview only. Nobody is typing on the other end.

What’s going on underneath

The tabs you have open right now.

Click through them. Every search has something underneath it.

(yes, all of them are open at the same time)

Why I do this

I worked at a Best Place to Work.

We won Best Place to Work. Then came the layoffs and a workload that quadrupled. I was told to be grateful. Four months later, I quit.

Read my story

The path

Three questions, in this order.

Step 1

5 Cs Driving Burnout™

What’s driving it?

Move five sliders and see which C is driving your burnout.

Find your loudest C

Step 2

Four kinds of pivots

Which move fits?

Two questions tell you which move fits. Does the work fit? Will this place meet you halfway?

Find your pivot

Step 3

TRACE Career Alignment Method™

How do I test it and commit?

Five moves to test your next step, then commit. TRACE starts once you can breathe again.

Walk the five moves

How it works

Career change, run like a research project.

We figure out what you want to keep doing, test it small, and you don’t blow anything up until the data says go.

If you don’t have to
blow it up, let’s not.

Staying and crafting the job you have is a real pivot, and so is a move inside your company. If the work itself has to change, we test that too, small, before you leave anything.

Movement creates momentum.

The habit to drop

Magic eight ball decisions.

Trying to choose your next career move by guessing instead of testing.

Shake the ball and you get an answer that sounds official and tells you nothing. Career decisions often get made the same way. You rework the list, wait for a sign, scroll the posts, or trust a gut feeling, and every one of those is a guess. Each guess below has a swap. The swap is a small test that gives you real information, and you can run it this week.

“There is no magic eight ball. I wish there was.”

Tap the ball to shake it.

“Reply hazy, try again”

Reworking the pro/con spreadsheet.

Swap: one 20-minute conversation with someone doing the work.

“Ask again later”

Waiting for a sign: one more good week, a layoff.

Swap: pick a cutoff and what you’ll have learned by then.

“Cannot predict now”

The job-post scroll.

Swap: pull five job descriptions and mark the “hell yes” and “absolutely not” bullets.

“Signs point to yes”

The big leap on a gut feeling.

Swap: test one piece of the work before you leap.

Tara in a gray armchair raising a mug toward the camera

Tara sitting backwards on a chair, smiling, holding a white microphone low beside her

Meet Tara

I was good at the job that wore me out.

I spent 15+ years in leadership development, higher ed and corporate instructional design, being very good at jobs that were slowly wearing me down. Now I run career change like a research project, and I treat burnout as evidence about what to do next. I live on the NC coast with my husband and five dogs, who are all very opinionated about my schedule.

More about me

A few favorite things

Snack: French fries, always
Big plans: Staying home
Reading: I’m a slut for self-help books
Comfort TV: Parks and Rec is at the top, since it’s what helped me meet my husband. Then Friends, Golden Girls, New Girl, and Gilmore Girls.

Four kinds of pivots, four real clients

What clients did next.

Stay and craft

Her boss was on her side, so she treated the role as an experiment. She took the work she loved back on purpose and made the role hers.

Pivot from within

Two weeks from quitting, she charted her real workload and took it to leadership. She now has a new job description built around training, at the same company.

Same work, new place

She used her job as a lab and collected the experience interviewers said she was missing. She’s now in a founding customer success role at an early-stage company.

Full pivot

After a layoff, he talked to people already working solo and ran free practice audits. He has sent his first proposal to a paying client.

Real clients, shared with identifying details changed.

Coached since 2025

100+

clients served

"Tara helped me climb my way out of burnout."

Michael A.

"This session helped me realize the most important challenge in front of me: I’m not stuck!"

Jordan P.

"With you I received: confirmation, confidence, validation, forward momentum, connection, and insight."

A client

"It was wonderful, and healing, to be validated in what I was experiencing was burnout."

Lisa S.

"I left the session feeling both validated and encouraged."

B.C.

"I really liked the group setting so I could hear from other people."

Avery T.

The podcast

The Balanced Badass Podcast®, every other week.

Conversations about testing your next career move.

Tara with arms crossed, holding a white microphone and looking off to the side — Latest episode

Episode 63 · October 8, 2026

Why leaving a job feels like leaving your people

Listen and read the show notes

Work with me

Pick where to start.

Tara working at her laptop with a white microphone on the desk beside her

Bringing this to a team? Workshops, keynotes, and consulting

10+ years in and still wondering if it’s you or the job.