8 tips if you are stuck in your job for years and want to move on!

~Yogendra Joshi (Aug-2023)

Professional (LinkedIn) || Artist || Photographer || Speaker

I was recently approached by a few friends who are in their jobs for over 10 years and want to move out, but they don't know where to start.

Here is a compilation of various pieces of advice I gave them. Hope it will be useful for several of you who are in a similar situation or know someone who can benefit from it.

TL;DR: If you really want to move out of your current job and get a new higher paying or a better profile job, my advice is to do following:

1. Discover yourself
2. Package yourself
3. Peg yourself
4. Re-skill yourself
5. Re-package yourself
6. Market yourself
7. Test yourself
8. Learn from failures and try again

If you find this interesting or useful, read along. Be warned, it's a long read!

Problem Statement:

One or more of these!

• You are an IT professional.
• So you have been in the same job for over 5-10-15 years.
• You are doing great, but don’t feel you are being recognized for the same.
• You are being taken for granted.
• You want better work-life balance and better job satisfaction.
• Most importantly you want to reach the next level financially.
• You feel you are falling behind the market as you are not working on the latest technology.
• You are spending long hours, but the job is kind of automatic as you are doing it for so long and you don’t need to learn new things to perform. (there is a pebble in my shoe but my foot has adjusted to it and I am able to walk, but not run).

Possible Solutions

1. Look for different role in the same organization (this won’t change your salary, so if that’s a major pain, skip)
2. Look for a job outside. (This is the hard option, will require you to work hard or find someone who trusts you and in a position to offer you a job)
3. Take a break and then try 1 or 2. (If you are not the bread earner for your family and can afford to take a break, consider it. It’s true that getting back into the workforce after taking a break is a bit harder than finding a job when you are already doing one. But maybe you genuinely need a break. And possibly you deserve it and that’s the only way to can upskill yourself to get the next level job).

How to get there?

I can’t resist sharing an idea from one of my most favorite fantasy authors Brandon Sanderson in the book series Stormlight Archive.

What’s the most important step?

It’s not the first step. It’s the “next step”.

Too many people start (take the first step) but don't follow through till the end, and hence the most important step is the next one till you reach your destination!

Immaterial of the path you take 1, 2 or 3 you will need to do something different and / or same things differently to get to the next level. Here are a few things I recommend.

1. Discover yourself

It’s possible that years of disappointment and routine have gotten to you and you no longer feel you are worth a lot, just because you don’t know how GenAI works or can’t imagine what the image-generation technology has anything to do with your world (say finance or procurement).

Also if you are paid badly and you don’t see your job as very important, you may feel that you can’t get more money or interesting products / technology to work on.

Think again!

The job you do is important. Else you won’t be paid.

Say as a Product Manager, whether you work on new features, new projects, handle customer escalations or take solutions to market, you are doing INNOVATION. Immaterial of the technology you use. You are solving problems for real people.

Take pride in what you do. Imagine the people in and out of your company who would proverbially “die or kill” to be in your position. I know the job is not perfect and you want to move on, but don’t judge yourself by your current view of your current job.

You are awesome, and you can do some awesome things once you decide to change your situation.

It’s going to be hard, so brace yourself (and your family). Then get started.

2. Package yourself

If you quit, the position will be back-filled. If that’s true, find how your manager or HR will package your position when hiring your replacement. You are already doing the bulk of that and now see if your resume looks as impressive to fit that profile? If not, it means you will not be selected for a job you are already doing! That’s absurd.

So write your profile to meet and exceed the job profile for your replacement! That's step 1.

Next, look for a few sample job profiles. There are two schools of thought I have seen. One is “your profile should not be more than a page long”. I don’t subscribe to that school.

That said, you don’t want to throw a book at your potential internal or external recruiter.

I can offer my resume from early 2022 for review, it’s nowhere near perfect. But it got me a job, that too at Google as a Senior Product Manager. So I am hoping it will be good enough to start. But by all means search for better job profile templates and cobble up something that works for you, showcases your strengths and doesn't put the reader to sleep.

This will be your current profile. We will work on it further, but this will be step 1 to ascertain where you are.

3. Peg yourself

Now you know where you stand, decide where you want to be.?

When you start off, you will have no clue. So talk to friends or even complete strangers. Make use of linkedIn to reconnect with old colleagues and even complete strangers in companies and roles you want to get in. If you ask nicely, 1 out of 10 (or 20 or more!) will accept your request and talk to you. Are you willing to invest time and emotional energy? You should!

When you meet people, ask them openly about the salary ranges you can expect in their companies. Some will tell you their own salary and some will hint at ranges. In either case you have something to go by.

Also, look for job offerings for your experience levels and see the salaries being offered in the location you are eyeing for.

We are assuming that the ranges you discover are higher or much higher than you make today.

If not, you may be in a classic “HR-Trap” and we will not discuss that today.?

Considering the discussion is around the fact that you haven’t changed jobs for 5-10-15 years, we can go with the assumption that changing the salary band is one of the key motivators and you find you are being underpaid based on the data you gather.

Be cautiously optimistic. Don’t aim too low, but don’t aim unrealistically high if this is your first job switch in several years. Decide the location, designation, salary, job profile, work-life-balance you want to aim for and ascertain which ones are negotiable and by how much.

Now gather as many job profiles for your target companies - target location and target salary combinations and list out the minimum and additional requirements to apply. (here is a sample linkedin job query, change to suit your needs)

Check that with the job profile you created in step 3. Does your profile match most of the requirements? If yes, you can skip to step 6.

In all likelihood you will find several gaps in your profile compared to the market expectations.

There are two likely reasons for this.

A) You have done things which can be repackaged for the requirements or you simply forgot to add things to your profile:

• Go update your profile, be creative.?
• Make a list of things you have done to support your claims and them in a separate supporting document for the day you will get questioned about it
• Don’t fake but it’s okay to boast a bit. 50% overconfidence is better than 50% confidence in job hunts.?
• Don’t undersell yourself.

B) Even after doing that, there are genuine gaps in your knowledge. This requires you to plan the re-skilling discussed in the next section.

4. Re-skill yourself

Keep a dedicated month (or a quarter) for this. If you don’t have enough time, dial down the hours on the job you have decided to quit, dial down family commitments. Those annual leaves expire every year, take some of those. Even a month-long “medical leave” if the stress is too high.?

You prepared so much to pass some mundane exams in school and in college. Why not prepare even harder when you are looking to change your life with a new job?

There are several kinds of re-skilling you need to do.?

• How to prepare for an interview?

I am a lifelong product manager and a storyteller, so I will share my experience in preparing for Google Product Management interviews. You can find similar resources in your own domain / technology.

Let’s start with “how to give interviews”. Cracking product management interviews in large and reputed (say MAANG companies) can be more of art than science. And you need to prepare for it. At least I prepared for each of my interviews at Google. (I had 6 interviews and 5 team fitment rounds, a total of 11 over 8 months).

Here are a few really great resources I used:

• Exponent Product Management Interview Prep
• Exponent Mock Product Management Interviews
• Jeff H Sipe - Practice Interviews

I used all the free resources on youtube, but if you are really serious about the job change and are out of practice or not very confident, I would highly recommend getting enrolled in some organized efforts.

I really liked what these guys have! https://www.tryexponent.com/.

They charge around ~$150 or a year worth of help. You will recover that cost in the first few days of your next job or will at least help you improve your skills by a long way.

Of course there will be many other such services, possibly better than what I stumbled upon. Check with friends and see what has been helpful for them. (add this to the list of questions when you meet people as discussed in step 3).

• Domain / Technical Skills

We will discuss AI-ML in the next section. But beyond that you may have lost touch with latest developments in your own domain (say Finance or Marketing) or your technology beyond what’s needed for your own day-to-day job.

Look for YouTube channels / newsletters which focus on the domain or technology you are headed towards. There are just too many resources. All you need is to find them, make a list and start checking them from the list one by one.

Carve out 1-2 hours in your schedule for a month in doing so. It’s hard. But I never said it’s going to be simple.

Believe me, it will be very rewarding eventually.

• Communication

If you can’t express what you can do, no one knows, and no one cares. It’s that simple.

If you are like me and English is not your native language, we still think in our mother tongue, translate it in real time faster than Google Translate in our head and then express ourselves.

This is one of the most underrated skills, but thankfully there are several resources available online. Find them, use them, and practice.

Another practice that has helped me immensely over years is audiobooks and podcasts. Fiction, Non-Fiction, Business, Finance… anything you are interested in works. Listen to a ton of people talk, find out the style you like and listen to the select ones even more. Eventually it rubs on you and you pick up the expressions and enrich your communication from “sharing ideas” to “making it interesting”

It takes time. Take small goals and crack them. Be it converting your profile into an audio file, telling what you do to the freshers in your company or taking the stage and speaking on an interesting topic or joining a group like toastmasters and completing their pathways. Whatever works. The direction is more important.

• AI / Machine Learning / GenAI

I can’t put this away any longer ??. Yes everyone wants to only talk about how AI is going to take away your job. It’s not! Someone who can use AI tools better than you is going to take away your job, unless you learn to be more efficient using AI.

You may or may not master the AI-ML, but you need to have a perspective on how it works, how it’s changing the world and most importantly how it affects your domain or technology going forward. Having a clear viewpoint of your own is a must.?

Litmus test: You should be able to explain these to a 10 year old.

Hold on, don’t jump and enroll into one of the million “Master ChatGPT in 3 hours” courses. There will be time for that as well.

Machine Learning

First understand what Machine Learning is and how it is different from traditional ways of digitalization and automation. But realize that, it’s still just a tool. It’s a means to an end.

If you have an appetite for coding, look for some hands-on tutorials with python that will take you through the real basics. I did the Machine Learning course by the great Andrew Ng in 2018 and I still remember the basics. The course should still be free and you pay only for certification. Only challenge is that the programming language is a bit old for this one. So if you find something similar with Python, go for it.

Deep Learning / AI

Once you understand that machine learning is about solving programs through pattern recognition, move to Deep Learning. Figure out how Neural Networks work.

I will highly recommend the Deep Learning course by Fast AI. Even if you are not planning to do the programming yourself, just take a bucket of popcorn and watch the course content. You will learn so much. While you are at it, also check the AI Ethics content on fast.ai . It will help you form an viewpoint on what's in store and what does Responsible AI mean.

Generative AI

Okay, it’s time to look for that ChatGPT course now. Free or Paid. And not just ChatGPT, include Midjourney, Google Bard and a whole lot more. Google has some wonderful courses on Generative AI.

Understand how Generative AI is different from the machine learning techniques and deep learning techniques and what does “Emergent Properties” mean and try to imagine how it can change your job going forward.

At the least find out what “Prompt Engineering” means. That one is a life saver!

Again, you don’t need to be an expert. Unless you are appearing for engineering roles in AI, you don’t need to show your "code". Even if you can have a clear point of view on AI-ML and how it impacts the future of our work, it will be a huge differentiator in your interviews.

Once you do any of these courses, go back and update that resume!

5. Re-package yourself

Now that you have been fully re-skilled, let’s work on your profile again!

Haha, whom are we kidding? We have no time to wait till ALL your learning plans are finished. You may be over ambitious and your list may take years to finish.

Once you get started on the journey, block your calendar for 30 mins every 2 weeks and update your profile or just polish it. Start uploading that resume to job sites and job opportunities you find. Who knows, what you have may be enough.

In football, many times if you have reached the opposition goal post but don’t have anyone to pass the ball to, you take aim at the goalpost and fire away. Who knows that may be enough!

Just make sure from when you start till you get your next job, you keep updating your profile and re-packaging yourself.

And if your experience is diverse (say Product Management, Consulting, Project Management, Customer Relations) create multiple profiles that match the standard job description.

You are not lying, you are only deciding to remove the things which are not relevant for a given role.

6. Market yourself

This is a parallel and ongoing activity. This world is ruled by people who can express themselves. If you are an amazing coder, participate in hackathons and make friends in doing so. If you are a Program Manager and learnt something interesting recently through experience, white a blog / LinkedIn post or even in your team newsletter.

Try to build a brand for yourself which is unique to yourself. You like to run, talk about it. You like to take pictures, start using them in your slides. You love math, teach your teammate’s kid who is struggling.

You don’t need to go overboard and start posting something for the sake of posting every day or every week. Find your own balance that suits your personality.

If you come from an Asian family, this is the hardest thing for us to do. The education systems give too much importance to the “marks on paper” than “who can speak well”. I see that it’s changing when I look at my own kid’s education, but still self promotion is heavily discouraged.

But remember. Job is a financial contract. Someone is paying to get value. They are going to take a wild guess as to who will add that value. So essentially you are selling your “skill” for "money". So if you are selling something, why be afraid of marketing yourself. There will be people who will snigger at your efforts, but don’t worry they are not going to pay for your kid’s foreign education.

7. Test yourself

Once you have a decent profile and have viewed (or better done) a few mock interviews, start kicking the ball at that goal post. If you have followed step 3 (Peg Yourself) you should have a dozen or more job profiles you are targeting. Start applying.

Better, try to find friends or old colleagues who work at those organizations and request them to refer you. If you can’t find anyone, try to reach some mutual connections and request them for a referral. If you ask nicely, there is a good chance that people will refer you.

If you are at a senior position, approach leaders in other organizations you may know and see if they can create a position for you.

8. Learn from failures and try again

Let’s face it. 99% of your efforts are probably not going to result in a job offer. But you don’t know which one is going to.

Can you take the interview rejections and failures?

If it’s too hard, look back at dozens or hundreds of interviews you may have taken in your career. Did you reject any candidates? Of course you did. Do all those rejected by you got jobs elsewhere? My guess is.. Yes. So will you!

Different organizations have different norms and methods to select candidates. Some take months (remember, it took me 8 months in Google but it took just 15 days in another organization).

Be patient. Each rejection gives you more time and more resources to make yourself better.

And while you do that, keep smiling in your current job. Remember it’s still the one you have and brings food on the table. Give it the respect and love it deserves.

How can I help?

About me: I have 20+ years of experience in enterprise Product Management and worked closely to make several fortune 500 customers successful globally with products ranging from financials, CRM, loyalty, marketing and cloud FinOps. I was Director Product Management at Oracle for several years and now lead an important product area at Google in Cloud Billing. Also I am a passionate and recognized photographer and artist. I am also a public speaker around innovation and have two modules called "Happiness through Innovation" and "Art of Innovation".

Mentoring of young professionals to be successful in their careers gives tremendous self satisfaction. I try to keep 2-3 hours each month to guide young professionals who approach me through various avenues. My speciality is in Product Leadership. Feel free to ping me if I can be of any help. I will try my best to accommodate. At the least, I will reply to LinkedIn messages in earnest.

Feel free to comment / share / affirm with your experience or contradict. Let's have a conversation.

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