Morph In Place

Very often the quickest way to a promotion, a raise, a renegotiation of your current job is through a job search. I have seen this so many times it's become something I tell clients to expect.

It can happen early in the process of looking, when the client has begun to really gain the confidence in their ability to find a new role at another organization. It may be that this confidence extends to how they approach their work -- how they interact with their peers, their leadership, their managers, and maybe even how they are doing their work.

It can also occur later in the process, when they receive the offer and they give notice -- now suddenly their employer counters with exactly what they have always wanted (if not sometimes better than they had hoped) turning their existing job into truly their dream job.

And, of course, it is possible that the client is applying internally to roles because within their organization are jobs that are indeed their dream jobs and they are securing interviews (and offers) for those roles.

I like to call all these scenarios ones where the client, Morphs In Place.

In some circumstances, staying with your organization is truly is the best the career choice. Take for instance, Sunil where he had worked for over two decades for a global organization. To leave at this point in his career meant giving up much he had worked hard to earn in his current organization. And it meant being potentially the last person hired into what he knew as an in-flux economy. Staying put but changing roles was truly the best career move for him. And that's exactly what an aggressive job search led to. A colleague approached him with an internal role and because he had reviewed many possible roles at competitors, he was able to assist in crafting the position to benefit the organization but also to suit his skills, abilities, and interests.

Another client found that with offer in had, her current employer, suddenly had a complete change of heart when it came to all the variables that mattered most to my client: pay, equity, and title. Suddenly, despite trying many times before to get the scope of his previous agreement changed, now, her employer was willing, eager, and even enthusiastic about making changes in the package. And in this case, too, the best career decision, was staying with her current employer.

Still another found that with the support of our program, interviews for roles she wanted in the organization were now coming her way. Previously she would apply but never get interviewed despite having worked as a contractor for over 10 years for this multi-national. It was as though no matter how well she performed, they would never consider her for a full-time role. But with some significant improvement to how she presented, the offers for interviews came and then the full-time offer arrived. And, again, the best choice for her was to stay with her current organization just in a role that was full-time v. contractor.

It's tempting to believe that we cannot change our career; that what we want is impossible. But in my 30 year career working with over 42k people, I have seen that it is possible to make changes in our careers at any stage in our career. And here's what I have learned:

1. If you tried to make a change in your career before and you failed, it doesn't necessarily mean you will fail now. It's a different time. You are different. And you are likely to take a different approach.
2. There's value to getting support. Many times someone achieves with a team supporting them has eluded them when they went at it all alone. That's just true for much of what we might want in life. When we team up with others; we often get better results.
3. The journey itself is a reward. Just choosing to embark on a quest to change your career, going down this path, will give you greater insights into what it is you want (and don't want) and that self-discovery in itself has incredible personal value.