How To Move Up In Your Career - Why A Steady Job Is Bad For Your Career

why steady job is a bad thing if you care about your career that's right i'm actually suggesting a stable job is detrimental to your career but hear me out on why hey everybody it's brian from a life after layoff and today i want to talk to you about the idea of company loyalty and when too much of it is a bad thing we're taught the value of loyalty stability and hard work well before we enter into the workforce it's ingrained into us to pay our dues to be a company guy or gal and in reality there's nothing wrong with having those core values or those characteristics but at what point does having that mentality end up hurting you most of us can relate to this story let's talk for a minute about joe joe is a steady worker he got hired in as an entry-level accountant right out of school and promptly began his career he even got a cpa after a few years on the job knowing that he probably eventually might like to lead a team his boss has given him decent steady reviews over the past several years and he slowly worked his way through the salary ban through a series of merit increases he gets assigned an occasional project or two and generally he does a pretty good job on them now eventually joe's boss leaves the organization now this is the person that hired him joe secretly hopes to be considered for that role he even goes as far as to throw his name in the ring he goes and fills out the application and expresses formal interest in the job now his organization recognizes joe as being a good solid worker bee but they don't see him necessarily having the leadership potential so they end up going outside the organization to end up backfilling the boss's position pretty deflated joe still plugs away at his job knowing that eventually his day is going to come a couple more years pass the department continues to expand a new grad starts in an entry level role very similar to what joe started off at however this new person is only making 8 000 less than joe while he's pretty disgusted when he finds out joe justifies his compensation by the fact that he's nearly vested on his 401k he's also just qualified for the third week of vacation time and he's going to get a bonus this year now flash forward a couple more years joe's at the 10-year mark he's hit his 10-year anniversary and he has paid his dues however the company hits a rough patch and there's rumors around the water cooler that there might be some downsizing joe's certainly safe he's been working there for 10 years he knows all of the business processes he's considered a valuable member of the team and besides he's next in line for the promotion for sure at this point right but the bad news comes joe gets called into his hr manager's office who promptly slides a folder across the desk at him with the terms of his separation joe is beside himself all of those years of paying his dues and company loyalty all out the window in that instant once he shakes off the trauma from the layoff and gets back into the open market another realization dawns on him people five years and even younger than him have already received those promotions in similar companies he's now at least five years behind his peer group he's now behind in his career and he needs to play catch-up and fast he also realizes that staying in his position for as long as he did and paying his dues for all of those years now have actually come back to hurt him so that's the story of joe and this happens more than you realize so where did joe go wrong joe is what i consider to be an average candidate he's steady but unspectacular yet he has all the skills to do a position he's had some successes in his career maybe a few minor promotions he's also a likable guy but he's not aggressive he didn't go out and grab those opportunities he simply waited around for those opportunities to come to him he's the type of candidate that i as a recruiter see probably 95 of the time he's exactly the kind of candidate that's going to blend into the crowd now if you've watched some of my earlier videos you'll recall that we get a lot of candidates so when i post the position i might get anywhere from 200 to over a thousand applications depending on the role now if you're like joe you're just going to blend into the crowd you're going to be competing against hundreds of other people just like you so let's look at another candidate let's flip over to jill's story jill started off her career at the same time as joe she went into the same career path she was also an accountant by trade so she started off in an entry-level accounting role when she started into her role she knew very early on that she wanted to lead a team in finance so she started to create a master plan part of that plan was knowing that she would need a cpa so almost immediately after starting her first position she went out and got the certification she also knew that she was going to need some project experience and some experienced leading teams so she started creating a list of projects that she saw that she could improve in her department and presented them to her hiring manager her boss was really impressed he put her on all those projects and she started getting more and more responsibility but jill didn't stop there she knew she needed to get greater visibility in the company to truly get recognized so she started networking with other departmental heads in some cases she even got invited into some project groups with them her name quickly spread around the company as somebody to know not long after that she got a promotion into a team lead role with a modest salary increase and got a chance to lead people she recognized pretty early on though that her boss was not going anywhere he was what we call a lifer he was going to be staying in the same position and effectively he was going to be blocking her ability to move upward while the company loved her and she loved the company they weren't in a position to offer her the type of role that she would need to keep her on the career path that she wanted to be on at an industry event that she was a regular at she happened to be talking to a group of peers at other companies that are doing similar work she mentioned to them that she was feeling a little bit blocked in her career and was eventually going to start looking for a new role within a few months somebody in her network contacted her about a position that she couldn't pass up so after just three years of service she moved into a new major corporation that was going to look amazing on her resume she was going to get a 30 pay bump and she was going to get the position that her boss was blocking her from now this was the exact experience she needed on her continued career trajectory so it was a no-brainer for her to take this role so in just three years jill has passed by joe in terms of level experience and compensation so let's talk about that company loyalty a little bit deeper so with joe we have a case of somebody that's been waiting around paying his dues and maybe getting an occasional nugget to keep him occupied and then eventually he gets a layoff whereas jill is aggressive she knows exactly what she wants and she's not using job stability as a reason for staying at a particular position especially if it's not meeting her career goals she's what i would consider to be the superstar candidate now there's something to be said for loyalty because we do value loyalty as a characteristic in a person but not to the point where it ends up hurting you and being detrimental to your career now you need to ask yourself what are your career goals if you're new to your career or even if you're mid-career and you don't have a clearly defined path that's something that you need to figure out otherwise you're just going to be going through a series of uninspired roles and job progressions that just don't make sense in other words you're going to be an average joe now if you're a mid-career and you haven't found out your career goal yet you have to consider the fact that maybe you're in the wrong career path to begin with consider making a change into something that you're more passionate about i actually have a video that i spoke about this recently so if you think that's you feel free to check that out the point is is that jill knows exactly what she wants and every move she makes is very targeted toward that end goal if it doesn't help her achieve her goal she's just not interested so knowing this is actually also going to help your career search because you're not going to waste time on non-value-added positions you really need to think of yourself as a free agent now in sports a free agent is somebody that offers their services to any team that offers them the best opportunity the most in-demand up-and-coming free agents always work to hone their skills and make themselves more valuable in the open market so that they can command the best opportunities and the best compensation they also want to make sure that they're a starter in a major market ensure the team the company in our case is making a sizeable investment in that superstar candidate but really that candidate is the one that's in control you need to consider yourself a free agent as well that's why honing your skills and especially your career skills like the things that you're learning about right now these are all the things that you'll take with you from employer to employer remember you don't owe the company anything other than a fair effort for a fair pay because you don't have an agent looking out for you you have to make those opportunities on your own now this doesn't mean that you should be hopping jobs every time you don't get an opportunity or things don't go your way you have to learn the position and the required skills because that's a critical part of your career growth the same could be said for developing your skills and networking and learning the company culture so don't get too far ahead of yourself and go rushing off to tender your resignation but if you're truly ready for the next step and you're not getting that opportunity at your current company that's a sign that you maybe want to start thinking about updating your resume whereas somebody who leaves a position for a few extra bucks and doesn't really have any rhyme or reason to the type of role is going to be perceived as a job hopper the person who leaves a role for a very calculated career progression is not going to be especially if that's a calculated move and recruiters will understand that perhaps the company that you're working for just doesn't have that type of opportunity or maybe they don't have a mentor that's strong enough to give you the guidance that you need to help you develop to the next tier and maybe that other company does it's all part of your strategy so make sure that every position that you accept has a strong and clear purpose in mind even if it's a lateral move okay let's talk salary and compensation we obviously all are working for an income that's the number one reason why we show up we need to put food on our tables and we need to pay our bills we totally get that so a salary consideration should be a very important part of any employment decision make sure you add value and the income will follow now it pays to stay current on salary trends in your market just to make sure that you're being paid fairly and if you have to performance the results and the data to back it up you should feel no shame in going and asking for a raise but here's an unfortunate fact by staying at the same company and in the same position for a long time you're almost certainly going to lag behind the market because most companies adjust salaries based on an annual merit increase and that usually comes out to anywhere between one to three percent per year whereas a promotional opportunity or moving to a new company where you get a promotion you're looking at anywhere from a 10 to 30 percent bump my hiring managers always used to have an issue with this and it was always a struggle for me especially with the entry-level engineering roles that i would fill because we'd be bringing in entry-level engineers straight out of school with barely any experience and they'd be making within 10 grand of the senior engineers that had been enrolled for 10 plus years and that's just how it works if you stay in a position too long the open market is going to pass you by unless of course you get some sizable raises through internal promotions so the question is should you stay in your steady job now if you're somebody that values having a steady paycheck over career growth there's nothing wrong with that keep doing what you're doing but if you're stuck in a role that you're not properly compensated for or you're blocked from achieving your ultimate career goals it's something to start thinking about those people that are proactive and are actively going out and grabbing their opportunities are the ones that are going to be succeeding much faster in reaching their career goals not only that by being a superstar candidate you're also going to be less likely to find the unemployment line now if you need help with your career switch that's what i specialize in i'm a corporate recruiter with over 20 years of experience hiring thousands of people into some of the world's most prestigious and well-known companies i've got a website called lifeafterlayoff.com i'm gonna leave a link in the description below if you have a chance go check it out i've got tons of free information on there on how to land your dream job and i've got so much new content planned i can't even keep it on the page hey if you found value in this video give me a like and leave a comment below and let me know what your thoughts are and what we just talked about make sure you hit that subscribe button i've got so much content planned and you don't want to miss any of it let's help you find that ultimate position till next time guys

Channel: A Life After Layoff

Views: 243,090

Keywords: How To Move Up In Your Career - Why A Steady Job Is Bad For Your Career, how to move up in your career, career growth opportunities for employees, how to get to the top of your career, got passed over for promotion, passed over for promotion should i quit, how to ask for a raise at work, networking for job seekers, i want a steady job, networking for career, how to grow your career in it industry, advancing in you career, blocked from promotion

Id: AEHdLNUlJQc

Length: 11min 53sec (713 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020