How To Balance The Job You Have With The Career You Want

Today’s question is about advancing your career when you’re busy already with the job at hand.

One of my biggest concerns is how do people gain new technical skillsets when I'm so busy just staying afloat with my current job's demand. I'd like to gain more marketable skills that have a higher salary range. – Project Manager, media

Lifetime employment at one company, in one role is increasingly rare. This media PM is smart to think about how to best manage both the job at hand (“just staying afloat”) with their next job and future career overall (“new technical skillsets”, “more marketable skills”, “higher salary”). There is no single solution that will work for everyone, but here are three steps to ensure you’re investing your time, energy and attention on immediate, as well as long-term needs:

1 - Define specific parameters for success on your terms

What does “staying afloat” require? What exact technical skills are needed, and how is competency demonstrated? How much of a higher salary are you targeting? These are the parameters that need to be defined for the media PM, but you may have different parameters to establish. If you don’t know how success is measured -- on the job, in your next job and for your overall career -- then you won’t be sure you’re on track, behind or overworking one area instead of moving on to something else.

One HR professional felt like she was falling behind on the demands of her job, but when she took a step back to assess what was happening, it became clear that the scope of her role had grown considerably in the eight years she was at her job. Staying afloat in her current role was a moving target, and she wasn’t getting compensated for the extra work. Her changing role included areas of expertise that weren’t a long-term interest for her, so adapting for these new skills would take her further away from the jobs she wanted. She was also underpaid for so long that getting back up to market value within that employer would mean an improbable high double-digit raise. Succeeding at her current employer didn’t align with where she wanted to take her career – skill-wise or financially. This redirected her time, energy and attention from playing whack-a-mole at her current job to finding another job that was more aligned with success on her own terms.

2 - Brainstorm multiple approaches

The HR professional didn’t quit her job right away. First, she tried to negotiate a role more focused on her areas of interest, as well as a promotion and a raise. As these negotiations were underway, she invested time in looking at different industries. She even considered roles outside of traditional HR, staying open to a range of potential strategies for working on what she wanted and getting paid what she was worth.

Similarly, this media PM can brainstorm different ways to be marketable and get a higher salary (as these are the goals implied by their question). New technical skills are one way to be marketable, but so are working with different lines of business or across different geographies, managing distributed teams, budgeting and other financial experience or upgrading your leadership potential . Growing your skillset may result in a higher salary, but you might not have to add anything to your arsenal but better negotiating skills. Or you may be grossly underpaid, and spending time understanding the going market rate for your skills is a better immediate step.

3 – Schedule time and check-in dates for both immediate and longer-term priorities

If you had to do your current job in 10% less time, what would you do differently? How about 20% less or 50% less? If your goal is to take on a bigger role, you need to start thinking now about how you’re going to accomplish that. This challenges you to delegate more, find more efficient ways to get the necessary things done and drop the busywork that doesn’t matter. Whether you free up 10%, 20% or even just 5% of time, decide now where you’ll re-invest that time into your future career – essentially you’re choosing among the different strategies you brainstormed in step 2.

In addition to scheduling activities to focus you, give yourself checkpoints along the way so you can course-correct as needed. If you determine that you need to understand the market better to confirm you’re at the right title and pay, then set a deadline in your calendar for when you’ll have a better estimate. When that reminder comes up, assess if you need more information, and if so, the next step is how you’ll get that information and by when. If you already have what you need, then the reminder is a prompt to act on the information. Your future moves silently ahead – if you don’t give yourself a deadline, other more immediate needs will take priority. You might end up in the whopping 90% of people not working in their dream job !

Repeat steps 1-3 as-needed

Priorities change. You may need to focus on salary now , but later need to negotiate for flexibility , leave a legacy or pursue some other measure of career success. Companies change. You may love where you are, and focus your efforts on moving up the ladder, but then new leadership comes in or strategic direction changes or the company disappears (Arthur Andersen, FTX, Twitter?) Markets change. You may be interested in exploring a new industry, but with layoffs continually in the news, you decide to double-down on your current industry and find a different way to renew interest in your field.

Whatever you decide to pursue, define success in measurable terms, pick your strategy among many (not by default) and schedule time for both immediate and longer-term priorities.

Caroline Ceniza-Levine is the founder of the Dream Career Club , helping experienced professionals find work they love and earn more doing it. Follow her career column on Forbes.com for the most frequent posts.

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