It's a step back
What does that mean to you?
I had a candidate reach out to me recently and the gist of his message was, I've met with a company, and they're interested in me for a Director level position, but we all agree it's a step back, what do I do from here?
His goal is to let them down easy and stay in touch for when the VP position opens up.
When will it open up? Your guess is as good as anyone else's, there's no guarantee it will ever open up. When it does open up, will you get it? Or will the person in the Director position get it?
If I hire a Director today, you know they're looking at the VP position going, the VP is two years from retirement. So we hire the Director, this is probably even a selling point for them taking the job, I mean, they want to be a VP too.
So if the company hires you in two years, what have you been doing for two years? Waiting on this position? You could have been learning their business, learning from the VP, making relationships in the company and with the customers.
And if I'm the company, do I hire you over my Director who's been doing that for the last two years? If I hire you, I might lose that person, now I'm going to have two new people at the top of my org chart.
So what's a step back?
领英推荐
I think you need to come up with the most important things to you in your job search when evaluating this decision and maybe also use some humility.
What if it's location, and this job is in your backyard?
What if it's industry, and this is where you've always wanted to be?
Or it's the hottest company in their industry and you'd love to be a part of it?
Prioritize those things and it'll help you determine if a "step back" is worth it.
Good luck out there.
#careerpath #careers #jobsearch
Global Materials Director
1 年Interesting article. I'm going to play a little devil's advocate to keep the conversation rolling on this. Say you take the role leading to the role you ultimately want; this guy takes a director role setting aside his personal goals, comes in, learns the business and role in 2 years opens up. A lot can happen in that 2 years, new decisions makers come in for that VP position and suddenly they bring their own folks in or simply just choose to bring new external blood for a fresh perspective. You're right nothing is guaranteed. I get the point of the article is about prioritizing what really matters when it comes to a job search but I really keyed on the final comment about having some humility. Business' thrive of goal setting and delivery. Successful people (the kind of folks you want leading an organization) adopt that mindset for their own personal goals. If mid-level management said to upper level management, hey maybe we need to "take a step and be humble", do you think they have a job after that? continued in second comment.
Award-Winning Cyber Education Leader
1 年Sometimes a step back is necessary especially if you are switching careers and building new skills. And it's ok! It can be challenging to not play the comparison game with friends colleagues and peers, but as a sometime half marathoner who runs slowly like a turtle through peanut butter....I always say your race your pace.
Leadership from WHO Organization, ,Communication Directory, Supervisor, Mentor and Coach
1 年Greetings for the day Trust you all are doing great What I strongly think and believe is that for those who have clear purpose and global objectives , there will never be any moment to step back since all the procedures are calculated and all the assurances , correct strategies and defined methodologies are applies . It depends on how these objectives means to us and I must remind something very important here : The power of self-organized , maturity , wisdom and self esteem , dignity and morality , broad perspectives Intellectual ,emotional and Intelligence are the most accountable sources to guide , just like the Light house on the cliffs , I personally have the absolutely maximum enthusiastic to fallow my targets and have studied them quite enough time to be confident that all the measurements are done . The most important aspect is to remain focused , alert and aware . So many people have always been doubtful and uncertain for everything , Regarding my vision , based on different types of personalities and characteristics , there are numerous types of thoughts and ideas . Mines are completely focused on the clear targets and not distracted by anything none whatsoever .