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This article deals with professional reorientation and adaptation approaches in the face of socioeconomic changes that have occurred in Bulgaria since 1990. The changeover from the centralized planned economy to the market economy had a number of effects, including: increased employment insecurity; a rise in poverty; marginalization of certain sections of society; shrinking of social services and the intensification of crime and corruption. Two examples of individual paths and professional careers illustrate the different adaptation strategies at work: one imposed by the imperative of survival, the other resulting from voluntary choice. The question of the conversion of a number of representatives of former political and economic elites into private-sector entrepreneurs is tackled here, by means of an explanation of the processes and mechanisms that made it possible.