| OVERCOMING THE FEAR
OF CHANGE
By Bill Radin
©1998 Innovative Consulting,
Inc.
Career Development Reports
You and I are lucky -- we live in a world rich in possibilities.
Besides being able to select from an unlimited variety of
occupations, we also have the right to find happiness in
our daily work.
If you're considering a job change, it's probably for one
of three reasons:
- Personal -- You want to change your
relationships with others. For example, you may have discovered
that you're incompatible with the people in your company.
- Professional -- You've determined the
need to advance your career. For example, you've found
that you won't reach your professional or technical goals
at your present company; or that you're not getting the
recognition you deserve; or that you're not being challenged
technically; or you're not being given the skills you
need to compete for employment in the future.
- Situational -- Your dissatisfaction
has nothing to do with personal relationships or career
development; it's tied to a certain set of circumstances.
Maybe you're commuting too far from home each day, or
you're working too many hours, or you're under too much
stress; or you want to relocate to another city (or stay
where you are rather than be transferred).
Whatever your personal, professional, or situational reasons
may be, you're motivated by the desire to improve your level
of job satisfaction and make a change.
THE COMPLETE JOB
DESCRIPTION
In order to translate your needs into results, let's begin
by evaluating your present position -- it's the first step
in any job change.
- What are your daily activities? That is, how do you
spend your time during a typical day; and
- What are the measurable results your company expects
from these activities? In other words, how does your supervisor
know when you're doing a good job.
Often, I discover that people are hard pressed to come up
with solid answers about the specific nature of their work.
Try this exercise: On a sheet of paper, write a complete,
current job description in which you list your daily activities
and their expected, measurable results. This exercise will
not only help you clarify your own perception of your work;
it'll be useful later on when you begin to construct a resume
and communicate to others exactly what you've done.
THE POSITIVE POWER OF VALUES
Once you've described all the facets of your job, the next
step is to understand the relationship between what you do
and the way you feel.
I use the term values as a descriptor of personal priorities;
as a yardstick to help you:
- Understand what types of work-related activities you
really enjoy;
- Determine which goals or accomplishments are important
to you and give you a feeling of satisfaction; and
- Evaluate whether your personal priorities are in balance,
or in harmony with your job situation.
Although it's fairly simple to decipher which daily tasks
you really enjoy, the task of scrutinizing your personal
priorities can be tricky.That's because there are often
factors unrelated to your job that can come into play. The
point is, we all have highly personal motivations which
guide our career choices.
THE DESCRIPTION MAKEOVER Now
that you know how to clearly define your values, the next
step is to describe the changes you'd like to make in your
new job.
YOUR JOB CHANGING STRATEGY
If you were to look at your career from a purely strategic
point of view, I could give you four good reasons why it makes
sense to change jobs within the same or similar industry three
times during your first ten years of employment:
- Changing jobs gives you a broader base of experience:
After about three years, you've learned most of what you're
going to know about how to do your job. Therefore, over
a ten year period, you gain more experience from three
times 90 percent than one times 100 percent.
- A more varied background creates a greater demand for
your skills: Depth of experience means you're more valuable
to a larger number of employers.
- A job change results in an accelerated promotion cycle:
Each time you make a change, you bump up a notch on the
promotion ladder. You jump, for example, from project
engineer to senior project engineer; or national sales
manager to vice president of sales and marketing.
- More responsibility leads to greater earning power:
A promotion is usually accompanied by a salary increase.
And since you're being promoted faster, your salary grows
at a quicker pace.
Many people view a job change as a way of promoting themselves
to a better position. In most cases, I would agree. However,
you should always be sure your new job offers you the means
to satisfy your values. Your responsibility when contemplating
a change is to evaluate what's most important to you. Whether
you focus on a single aspect of your job , or on the overall
nature of the job you'd like to improve.
The more clearly you connect your values with your
work, the greater the potential for job satisfaction.
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