I occasionally look at my LinkedIn page and attempt to envision it through the eyes of someone who might be wondering whether or not they should hire me. It has some rough parts, for certain. Many people would take an eight-month executive role and remove it from their work history, for fear of what someone else would think. I explicitly leave that role in there for two reasons.
The first reason is that it is a screening mechanism to remove people who rush to summary judgment without all the facts. The second reason is that it is an important conversation for me to have with a potential boss. They need to understand that some things are complete non-starters for me.
I bring this up because I am having conversations with people about career planning right now. The various places I have worked and the various roles I have held have all been tremendously educational. I have a great role with an awesome team at the moment and I am doing my very best to impart some wisdom to a large number of people on how they can achieve the same thing, eventually.
Part of that process includes avoiding some of the rough patches I have experienced and trying to distill some of the hard lessons learned along the way to help prepare people for future roles.
This is harder than it sounds.
I have flip-flopped between individual contributor roles and senior management roles over the past ten years. Popping the clutch professionally like this is hard and frustrating. I do not recommend it to anyone. It is why I spend some time going over five-year plans with people. It is important to see where you are now and determine where you want to go. It is also important to create a plan to get there.
Some jobs I have taken (and consequently abandoned) were part of a five-year plan. I try to make light of the fact that my five-year plans change every three years. Market conditions, family issues, and company peculiarities often create complications. I tip my hat to those of you who have celebrated ten-year anniversaries with their employers. I have no idea what that must feel like.
I am now at a point where I have checked off several big items on my professional bucket list. I have a few items I wish to complete and also a few items I have removed. Given what I have learned in the past two years, I do not wish to run a crowdfunding project. That is a small example of something I wanted to do professionally and have removed from my bucket list for a variety of reasons.
My goal with this post is to talk more about the journey than the destination. My LinkedIn profile has too much in common with the poem Ozymandias for my liking. I made many career decisions as a reaction to something else happening. I do not regret these decisions or the circumstances that necessitated them. I am mindful of using them to help shape the careers of people at an earlier stage in their journey than I am.
As your eyeballs absorb the photons emitted from the screens graced with these letters, I urge you to think about where you are going with your career and what your five-year goals are. You should also contemplate how often you change them as you approach double digit years of career experience.
If you are struggling to figure out your goals, I am more than happy to spend some time answering questions for you, or more importantly, asking them. This is a conversation you should have sooner rather than later. There is a remarkable increase in individuals, companies, and platforms offering mentorship services. As I sit down and help some people in a mentorship capacity I find myself fighting off feelings of envy. There were a few frustrating times in my career when I was having a professional dilemma and could have used some external words of wisdom.
This is only fifty percent a sales pitch—okay, maybe sixty percent.
Go look in the mirror and ask yourself where you expect to be in five years. If you know where you are going and have a good plan to get there, awesome. Five stars. I am excited to hear that you have a good plan! If you do not know where you are going or are not sure if you have a good plan to get there, maybe it is worth finding someone to give you an external perspective. Coaching and mentorship are valuable services and will help take some of the uncertainty and reactiveness out of your career journey.
I know I sure could have benefited from it.
Sorry for the lack of a snickety-snarky close this week. I hope to see you all again next week!
