Archive for May, 2015
Some Career Transitions Take Longer Than Others
Some career transitions take longer than others. Leaving a project management role at one company for another may be a matter of updating your LinkedIn profile, and making connections with recruiters, and performing well in interviews.
Wholesale career changes might take longer. Not much longer if you’ve got transferable skills, are allied with an influential person at the place you want to work, launch your own enterprise or are just plain lucky.
It takes longer if your new career path requires going back to school for training or degrees, or means taking an entry-level job to gain experience in an unfamiliar field. But time is relative and two or three years of learning the ropes at a low-paying, low-stress, starter position might be the perfect transition between a job you hated and a new career that you’ll love for the rest of your working years.
I worked with a guy who transitioned from a six-figure sales job into a lower paid marketing role to build a career with more opportunities. He is savvy and worked hard, and six years later I bet he’s earning more than he did in sales and enjoying his life much better. Another friend moved from a lucrative engineering role to finance because it gives him the experience and credibility he needs for his next career move.
If you dream of a different career but are afraid that it will take too long or cost too much to get there, remember that you can start building the skills you need right now, before you quit. Take a night class. Volunteer in a related field. Go to events focused on your career topic and network. Ask people already in the roles you want to give you thirty minutes for an informational interview, where you ask them what skills and experience are needed to get started, what they actually do each day, and whether they like it or not.
I’ve done all of these things with great results. A series of informational interviews was how I learned early in my career that I wanted to focus on business, marketing and writing, and not on graphic design. I earned my MBA in five years of evening classes, and went to work each morning applying the knowledge I had just learned. I went to conferences and exchanged dozens of business cards with recruiters, executives and friendly people who I connected with. I’m still in touch with many of them.
If you’re still not convinced, read Jennifer Lesher’s blog post from May 20th, where she describes the transition from tech to airplanes. Can you feel her joy? Imagine yourself feeling the same way.
Regaining Confidence After a Bad Work Experience
Bad jobs can hurt our souls. Humans thrive on contributing to things larger than ourselves, being productive, positive interactions with others and recognition for our efforts. A job is much more than a means to pay the bills.
When a rotten manager tells you your work isn’t good enough – or you’re not good enough, it wounds your spirit. When coworkers blame and shame you, it rips little holes in your psyche. Even if you know that you add value to your company and that you do good work, even if you think your managers and their minions are idiots — constant negative feedback is damaging.
Many people who I’ve spoken with about quitting their jobs told me they lost confidence in themselves because of bad work experiences. These are people who have grown their careers, earned advanced degrees, or led initiatives that made millions of dollars for their companies. Some of them have tough reputations, and aren’t especially sensitive to criticism. Yet the negativity they endured made them unsure of themselves.
If you haven’t experienced a job like this and you’re not close to someone who has, you might be thinking, “If they were such great workers, why did their managers treat them so poorly?” Well, that is the reality of many organizations – whether military, education, corporate, religious or any other field — there is dysfunction. Often a team needs a scapegoat to blame for poor results, or to use as a target to vent their own insecurity and anger. Sometimes it is the company culture. Sometimes it is just crazy-making.
Feeling insecure about your value as an employee is not a great state to be in when searching for a new job. Interviewers can smell fear, and if you’re questioning your abilities, you may settle for a job you don’t want or accept a lower salary than you deserve.
It took some people two or three years to regain their confidence and self-esteem after a terrible job, regardless of whether they were fired or quit on their own. Ugh. That is too long to let the jerks continue to have power over you. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way. The people who bounced back quickly have this advice:
- Take back your power right now. Remind yourself as many times a day as you need to that this is your life. You get to choose whether you tell your coworkers “don’t talk to me like that” or quietly plot your exit while biting your tongue.
- You are more than your job. You are not your title, your company, or your salary. You are a whole person with many parts to your life. Know that your value as a human being is based on many things, but how your boss treats you is not one of them.
- You have skills and talents. When you feel low because you only hear what your manager thinks you are doing wrong, remember what you are good at. Write a list of your positive work traits if you need to. Take the Strength Finders test. Think of all you have accomplished in the past. When you’re scanning the job listings or updating your resume, this is the frame of mind to be in.
If you’ve left a horrible job or are currently in one, I hope you hold onto your self-worth and use what you’ve learned about the experience. You may come out on the other side with clearer boundaries, greater awareness of your strengths, and the confidence that comes from knowing that actually you are the boss of your own life.
Everything is an Illusion
On Monday evening between work and an association meeting, I rushed to the grocery store to pick up the staples I’d run out of: juice, organic greens, carrots, milk and Ben & Jerry’s. I went to my usual grocery store, where I know exactly where everything is, so it should have taken me ten minutes. I roll my carts fast.
The first stop was the juice cooler at the end of the aisle next to the produce department. No Suja green juice for my breakfast smoothies. I turned the corner where they have a smaller juice cooler. Nope. I wheel down the aisle where I know there are other coolers and see different kinds of juice, but no Suja. I look up and down at every shelf. Fine. I put three bottles of other brands in my cart.
Back to the produce. Where the hell are the organic baby carrots? They are not where they usually are, they are not under the big banner that says “organic” and they are not by the six different kinds of non-organic carrots. After speed-wheeling around the entire produce section I get the regular carrots. They’re probably Monsanto, pesticide-laden, nutrient-deprived, flavorless sticks, but whatever. I was in a hurry.
At this point I notice the irritation I felt transform into rage. They have rearranged the store so that it looks almost the same as it used to, except they have moved or stopped carrying what I always buy.
There are so few things we can count on in life, and I was completely unprepared that knowing where things are in the grocery store was no longer one of them.
As I observed my inner rage, I limited my exterior reaction to a scowl on my face. I also acknowledged that since I was proud of myself for noticing my anger with detachment, I was both progressing in my spiritual enlightenment and still had enough work to do on my ego to continue hanging on Eckhart Tolle’s every word. Love him!
I continued scowling with detached rage towards the prewashed organic greens. I had to slow down to a normal grocery cart rolling pace so I could find the juicing greens that I wanted in an area that had tripled the number of lettuce containers. It took longer than usual to find what I wanted, but I did, and then was off to the dairy aisle. Along the way, I found a section of organic baby carrots, but said screw it, I was not going to backtrack all the way through the produce section to swap out one bag of carrots.
Thankfully, the milk and Ben & Jerry’s were where they should be. Although I was about to say something funny-sarcastic to a guy standing in front of the freezer, blocking my access. Then I recognized him as one of my neighbors and told him what I was about to say and we both laughed and chatted for a while.
At the checkout counter, the cashier asked if I found everything ok, and I said no, because a lot of stuff had moved and also there wasn’t any Suja juice in the now four separate juice locations. He called someone on one of those phones they have at their counters and then told me “Chris says we don’t stock that brand.” I told him I used to buy it RIGHT THERE, pointing at the juice cooler. He went on to tell me Chris has been at this store for twenty years, and if he says they didn’t stock it, he knows what he’s talking about.
I noticed with detachment that this isn’t very friendly customer service but I wasn’t even angry any more. I just wanted to pay so I could get home in time to unload the groceries and get to my meeting.
Then Chris appears with two small bottles of Suja juice and said they must be out of stock of the big bottles. My ego was so happy that the cashier was proven wrong that I lost several spiritual growth points.
Then the cashier handed me a card to take an online survey and said that if I rated them a 10 in customer service I would be entered to win a $100 gift card. That was so weird given the experience we had shared that for a moment I lost my ego completely. I was just pure consciousness, observing how strange humans are; how everything is an illusion.
And then I snapped out of it and ran my cart out to my car so I could get my ice cream home before it melted.
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