Introduction
Managing your career is an important task. It is also quite challenging, because you need to make important and sometimes complex decisions: What company to join? What job offers to consider? How to maintain your employability in the job market? These questions require that you personally spend sufficient time to define your career plan and that you consider career decisions carefully.
But you should not be alone. It is highly advisable to find people in your environment, who can be sparring partners and who can provide career counseling. Talking things through, bouncing ideas back and forth, considering different perspectives and asking out of the box questions will certainly be of great help in your career management. That is of particular importance if you come to a point where you must make fundamental career decisions. Where you might feel lost, because you can’t continue but you don’t know what alternative road to take. In these kinds of circumstances, it is even more critical to have a person you can talk to in order to get career advice.
Samantha’s story
Samantha had studied pharmacy. She had no clear career plan when she started to look for a job, but the offer of a large hospital was attractive, and she had accepted it. She worked in the hospital pharmacy. She liked her colleagues. The company culture was great, and she had a good salary. Samantha worked hard to contribute to the good functioning of the hospital pharmacy, because she knew that this was crucial for the patients. Many of the drugs she was managing were lifesaving, such as the cancer products. This was an area of specialization of the hospital and Samantha felt passionate about her contribution, even if this demanded sometimes long working hours.
Drug supply shortages could cause massive stress in the organization. While Samantha was able to cope with such challenging situations at the beginning, these crisis situations became increasingly a burden for her. She started to hate the overtime requirements. Monday mornings were sometimes very difficult for her. She still enjoyed working in the team and had trust in her manager, but she started to feel more distant. Less engaged. She was surprised to notice that she was sometimes reacting in a slightly aggressive way to urgent requests. This was not her.
A day came where one of the lifesaving medicines was running out of stock. Everyone was mobilized to solve that crisis. Samantha had no choice but to participate in this collective effort, but she came to a point of no return. This was too much for her. She was no longer able to cope with this type of stress. She felt lost. She had to talk, but to whom? She opened up to one of her best friends, who recommended a great blog with career advise 😉. Samantha understood that she had never really managed her professional life, but that she had stumbled into her job. She had never reflected on her personal needs nor on her career aspiration.
Encouraged by the readings Samantha asked for a one-to-one meeting with Sue, her line manager. Samantha had prepared that conversation well and had decided to share her thoughts openly. Sue was listening carefully. She created the type of holding environment where Samantha felt protected and valued. Sue did not try to bring answers, but simply asked some clarifying questions and offered support. They agreed to have a follow-up conversation the next day. Samantha knew that Sue was in a very difficult situation, because one team member had resigned, and another person was about to retire. She realized this was the worst possible moment to raise this topic with Sue, especially in the context of drug supply issues.
But Sue was very calm and understanding. She seemed to be able to cope with this “perfect storm” and still keep focus on Samantha’s personal situation. Sue had received career counseling training as part of her leadership development and that helped her a lot in this situation. She wanted to find a response for Samantha while avoiding a disruption of her department. Sue was transparent about this and asked Samantha to take these circumstances into account, which Samantha committed to.
Sue and Samantha found a solution: Sue offered Samantha some external career counseling support, which the hospital would pay for. The purpose of this counseling was to help Samantha clarify what direction to give to her professional development. Samantha committed to stay for additional 9 months and to provide all her support. Sue could find a replacement during that time and Samantha had more time to reflect and to decide on her next career step. Samantha felt hugely relieved. She was herself again. She engaged passionately in the counseling process, established a clear career plan and was able to give a new orientation to her career.
One year later Samantha joined an oncology research organization. She felt that she could contribute even better to serving the cancer patients, because she participated in the development of very promising new molecules. In addition, the working environment was matching her personal preferences much better. Samantha was very thankful to Sue for the support she had made available.
What can we learn from Samantha’s story
Don’t wait till you are in a crisis to call for support in terms of career management. Professional career counseling can help you clarify your career aspiration and find the life-work-balance that you seek for.
Opening up to people you trust is very important, because you will need a sparring partner to exchange and be challenged. Assess if you can be open on this with your manager or HR partner. They may be able to provide support, especially if you show awareness for the company requirements.
Sven Sommerlatte : Successful Career Strategy – An HR Practitioner’s Guide to Reach Your Dream Job (Springer, June 2023). ISBN: 978-3-662-66790-3
Alicia had been monitoring job offers for 2 years and had applied for a couple of Executive Vice President Communications positions without success so far. She found a job add from a well-known kitchen equipment company on LinkedIn that draw her attention. Alicia had a passion for cooking and eating and she loved high end kitchens. During weekends she sometimes went to kitchen stores simply because she was fascinated by the sophisticated products they were selling. That brand that was now looking for a Head of Comms was one of her favorite. Alicia was super excited. She felt slightly overwhelmed, because so much was at stake for her.
Alicia took the firm decision to make all the efforts to compete for this position. She established a plan to ensure she would be best prepared for the job interviews. She had 3-weeks time. Alicia first started to collect as much information about the company and its products as she could. But that was quite random, and she understood from the advice of a friend working in HR that a more structured approach would be required. This is how she organized that preparation phase:
1) Analyze the job description carefully
Alicia read the job description very carefully and identified from this document all the requirements. In addition to that she checked other job descriptions for Head of Communications positions to be sure that she had a very clear understanding of what was expected in such a role. She felt that some of the aspects were not fully clear in the job add and listed these as “questions for clarification in the job interview” on a separate list.
2) Compare your profile with job expectations
Alicia then compared her profile with these expectations. She tried to be as objective as possible to identify those areas where she clearly had a strength, and those expectations from the job description that her own profile was not perfectly matching with. Her main “areas for development” were team leadership (because she had not yet managed a team of that size) and the strategic leadership dimension (because she had so far focused mostly on execution). Alicia was very self-confident, and she knew that she had the passion and the drive to overcome these “weaknesses” because she was willing to go the extra mile for that job. She reflected about similar learning opportunities she had in the past and how she had managed them. She placed this position into the context of her career strategy to clarify how that role was matching with her development plan.
3) Assess the company and its industry sector
As a next step, Alicia put herself into the shoes of the CEO of that kitchen equipment company to take a helicopter perspective. She analyzed the past performance of the organization and read a couple of annual reports with the support from a friend who was in Finance. She also read online reports from financial analysts to understand the macro-economic trends of that industry, the challenges it had and how this player she wanted to join was positioned. It was obvious that the company had a solid performance, but she also understood that the pressure from low-cost manufactures and the digitalization were potential threats. Alicia found a document from a consulting company that was offering interesting recommendations, and she took note of that as well. She also listed a couple of strategic questions that she wanted to ask in the job interview and added them to the “questions for clarification in the job interview” document.
4) Check the company culture and purpose
Beyond the economical and financial aspects, Alicia collected information on the company’s culture through Glassdoor and other social media. This allowed her to get confirmation that the purpose of that company was matching with her own purpose and she got the reassurance that the ways of working were aligned with her personal preferences. But she decided to double check these aspects as well during the job interviews and added that to her question list.
5) Conduct a stakeholder mapping
Finally, Alicia completed the analysis with some stakeholder mapping. She was expecting to be interviewed by the Head of Marketing and by the Head of Sales, by the Chief HR Officer and by the CEO himself. Alicia collected information on these individuals to understand their perspective and needs. She found quite some information online because they had participated in industry conferences and given interviews. One of them even had a blog about trends in the kitchen equipment industry that was very helpful for Alicia. She realized that she would not have found that great source of information if she had not conducted this stakeholder analysis. Alicia prepared the discussions with each of them. She wrote down what aspects from her own profile would be of relevance for each of them. She also thought about the questions or concerns they could have with regards to her profile and how to best respond to these concerns. By that time, Alicia had the feeling that she already knew these individuals, even before she had personally met with them.
6) Rehearse the interviews
One week before the interviews started, Alicia conducted a rehearsal. Her HR friend had offered her to participate in this. She had also asked a friend who was working in consulting to help. Alicia shared the information from her intensive preparation phase with them and asked them to be as tough as they could with difficult questions. Alicia took the decision to be very open and transparent about her strengths and her areas for development. She made also sure that her passion and commitment were coming across and that the interview partners would clearly perceive her learning agility. They spent a full day and played all the interview through.
7) Get rest
Then Alicia stopped this preparation phase. She took 2 days off to have a long weekend. She exercised a lot and had good sleep. Alicia had the confidence that she had done everything she could to be well-prepared and that helped her not to think too much about the interviews and that job.
This allowed Alicia to be very relaxed on the interview days. The questions from her “questions for clarification in the job interview” list were very helpful. The interviewers noticed how well prepared she was and how much she knew about the job itself, but also about the company and the industry. They were very happy to engage and to answer these questions. The interview was much more a dialogue than a one-way interrogation. The interviewers were also impressed by Alicia’s self-confidence. She brought her areas for development up very directly and did not miss the opportunity to outline how she was going to overcome them. They thought that this courage and determination would make up for the missing team leadership experience. The strategic perspective she demonstrated in the interviews convinced them that she was able to operate at that Head of Communications level. Finally, her passion came across loud and clear.
Long story short: it was a very tough race. Alicia was short listed, but she knew that another candidate was still in the race as well. It was probably her calm and determined personality that made the difference in the end. She was able to connect with the CEO thanks to her stakeholder mapping in such a way that her last conversation was already focusing on the immediate requirements in that new role and how she would address them. She had managed to establish that level of trust during the interviews and this made the difference in the end. Alicia was selected for her dream job. Imagine her joy. This was celebrated with her friends who had supported her in the process.
What can we learn from Alicia’s story?
The key lessons to learn from that story are:
Make sure you understand the job requirements really well.
Compare these job requirements with your own profile to see where it is matching and where gaps may exist.
Be clear about your development opportunities considering the job expectations and think about how you can overcome them.
Analyze how that position is matching with your career strategy. What skills and experience do you expect to gain in that role? How is this supporting your longer-term career plan?
Be clear on your personal constraints (such as travel requirements and distance between home and office).
Specify your compensation and benefit status and expectations.
Assess the company and the industry sector in terms of performance and strategic challenges. Be vigilant to check if any major business disruptions are to be expected.
List all your questions and bring them into the interviews.
Conduct a robust stakeholder mapping.
Ensure you get rest before the interviews.
Be open, engaged and self-confident during the interviews.
Sven Sommerlatte : Successful Career Strategy – An HR Practitioner’s Guide to Reach Your Dream Job (Springer, June 2023). ISBN: 978-3-662-66790-3
