The key to a successful job search is aiming at a job that meets a high percentage of your requirements. This isn't easy because there are a lot of conflicting forces influencing your choice.
For example, "My wife wants me to be president," Sam Rivers, a senior executive, told his friend, a highly respected businessman. This statement tells a lot. Note that this doesn't say, "I want to be president." Nor does it say, "My wife wants me to be successful," or "happy," or "challenged"- or even "to earn $100,000." Whether or not this is a logical job requirement for Sam, it was a very important one for him to contend with. Job hunters often make key decisions based more on emotions than on logic-sometimes with dire results. I hope this chapter will help you make your choice more logically.
One of the major activities in your life most comparable to getting a job is deciding on housing. In both, you must establish priorities and evaluate alternatives until you make a choice that meets a high percentage of your priorities. Undoubtedly you will refine your priorities as you search. In buying a residence, for example, you must first decide on housing alternatives (i.e., a condominium, a two or three-family house, a single-family house, and so on). In a job search, you must decide among career alternatives: first, a career change involving doing something very different from what you've been doing versus doing something similar to what you've been doing; second, which of several alternatives in each category-perhaps buying or starting a business, a job similar to your last one, or consulting. Once you've decided on your preferred career alternative, you must locate and get one or two (or more) offers which meet a high percentage of your priorities and decide which is best for you. Visualize your job search as a two-step process: deciding among career alternatives and then finding the right job.
There are many unhappy job holders who didn't persevere long enough or use good judgment on their last job search. Let me illustrate by telling the story of four job hunters in their 40s, all with advanced degrees from prestigious institutions. One of the four even earned $ 130,000 a year. All joined well-known companies as members of top management after what appeared to be carefully planned and executed job searches. Two of the job changes involved moving families to a new city. All the jobs failed. Subsequently three of these job hunters reported that they realized on the first day of their new jobs that they never should have accepted them. The other realized on the second day that the job probably would fail. Can you imagine how a successful executive could make such an error? But these were not exceptions: in my experience perhaps half of the mid-career executives who make a job change are not with the new company five years later. And for an executive making a job change in mid-career, it seems to me that the minimum time period for success is five years.
William J. Morin, president, director, and chief executive officer of Drake Beam Morin, Inc., the largest of the nation's outplacement firms, has noted the risks involved. He states in the 1980 edition of the Directory of Outplacement Firms, a consultant's news publication, "Many individuals who are terminated after 5, 10, 15 years with the company have a tendency to go out, find a job, and get themselves in trouble very quickly in their next position. They bounce from that job into the next job, and they experience this bouncing for a number of years. This is usually because they did not take time to ascertain what they did wrong in the position from which they were first fired and to honestly determine the proper work environment in which they would be successful."
I do not have to stress that, if you have to go out on another job search a few years from now, it probably won't be as easy as this one (hard as this one may seem). An unsuitable job change at this stage in your career will make you less marketable. It also will likely be a much greater psychological hurdle, will probably involve less help from friends, and therefore will mean fewer opportunities. A second change certainly is possible; and sometimes it is more successful, because the job hunter is more realistic-but it can be even more traumatic than what you're going through now.
In setting your job objective, realize that there's a pattern to all careers. It's important to identify where you are and what's probably ahead of you. The "Phases of Your Career" chart will be helpful in this. For example, if you're 38, a desirable job might be as understudy to an individual who currently holds a job that's your ultimate goal. This person might be within five years of retirement or perhaps be a strong candidate for promotion. If you're changing jobs at 50, you might seriously consider a second career or working in a smaller company where your duties would be broader and less structured.
In your 40s and 50s your career may have reached a plateau. In making a job change, you will be in a small minority if you are able to substantially upgrade yourself in terms of salary, responsibilities, and title. You will increase your chances of doing so mainly by joining a high-risk company. But this period in your life presents perhaps one of the few opportunities you will have to make an in-depth reassessment of your goals. While it's unlikely that you sought this opportunity, it may come at an opportune time, because your goals and your life in general may be undergoing fundamental change. Throughout your 20s and 30s, your goal may well have been to get "to the top." Maybe in recent years you have recognized the chances of this have become slighter. Or, if your career goal has largely been met, you may feel somewhat at a loss because you don't have a further goal ahead of you. Or you may feel a sense of frustration because achieving the goal has not given you all the personal satisfaction that you had expected.
In any event, you are very likely at a time when the financial demands of your family, because of educational expenses, and so on, are at their peak. There may be upsets because your children are breaking away from home to establish lives of their own. Perhaps your spouse may be employed outside the home, increasing the demands on you at home. It is often a time of great emotional stress. Some of your peers work out their frustrations by drinking too much, playing around, or getting divorced. This is a time to be careful and patient about making a job decision.
The past few years have brought to the forefront a series of studies on the cycles of individuals' lives. Most popularly this is outlined in Gail Sheehy's Passages. The central theme in these studies is that most individuals go through a variety of similar stages in their lives. These stages can have a great effect on an individual's outlook at any one time. Some of the frustrations and adjustments that come about during any one of them may fade or correct themselves as time goes on.
A mistake many people make at, say 45, is to look for the kind of job that perhaps ten years earlier was their ultimate goal. They don't realize that their needs are different now.
You may have some of the following motivational changes, which are typical in mid-career:
- You may be anxious to do less of what you're required to do and more of what you want to do.
- You may not want to do, for say another 20 years, essentially the same thing that you've been doing for the last 10 years or so.
- You may want to be less involved in details and more with policy making and planning.
- You undoubtedly are becoming more aware of the need to prepare financially for retirement.
- You may want the time to develop an activity which you can pursue full-time when you retire.
