Three Career Mistakes You Might Survive, and One You Won't

When I was a kid the standard career advice went like this:

• Get into a good company where you can stay a long time.
• Never quit a job before you have a new job, and
• Whatever you do, don't burn a bridge. Memories are long, and you never know when you might need a favor down the road.

The job market and the nature of careers overall has changed dramatically since these rules were invented. The first rule on our list, of course, is not only nearly impossible to accomplish but also bad advice.

Your goal as a working person is not to stay in one company for decades, hiding out in the shadows and calcifying. Your goal is to keep learning and growing.

The more valuable you become to employers and clients, the more freedom of movement you will have to follow your own path rather than the path someone else has laid out for you.

Most of us are more likely to grow our muscles by changing jobs every few years than by finding a "safe" organization to work in for years on end.

What is job security, these days? It is something you build in yourself and carry around with you. No one can confer it on you.

You grow your own job security day by day by noticing what you do at work that is especially critical to other people's plans and priorities. We call the principal problem you solve at work Business Pain. It is the most critical part of your job.

We'll talk more about Business Pain in a moment!

Here are three career mistakes you can probably crawl out of okay, and one that will absolutely sink you.

You Can Recover from A Career Move That Didn't Work Out

If you want to grow your muscles, you're going to have to try things. Sometimes your experiments will work and sometimes you'll get learning, instead of the result you thought you wanted. That's okay!

Every successful person has tried things that didn't pan out exactly the way they wanted them to. They start companies and fail. They take jobs that don't work out. It's all fine in the end! They keep putting one foot in front of the other. 

Most of us have taken a job we ended up wishing we hadn't taken. A lot of us have made life changes that we tried to undo as soon as we realized they weren't good moves for us.

Maybe you got together with the wrong romantic partner and had a lot of upheaval in your life as a result.

Maybe you moved to a new location and ended up hating it. That's okay! A twisting path is the hallmark of a person who has learned some things about life.

How else would you learn anything important, unless you try new things all the time?

You can recover from any personal or professional move that turned out not to be your cup of tea. You can brand yourself right over that episode.

You'll use the Summary at the top of your Human-Voiced Resume to explain what you want to do next (whether it's going back to your old career path, or on to a whole new one) and how your most recent zig-zag fits into your career story.

It will fit in perfectly, but you have to see the connection before anyone else will see it.

Your recent move (the one you think of as a misstep) will make perfect sense to hiring managers and recruiters as soon as you see how your latest adventure brought you to the place you stand in right now - ready for your next challenge!

You Can Recover from Total Career Meltdown

Everybody knows what can happen when you get out of a long-term relationship and start dating someone new right away. It's called a rebound, and such relationships often end quickly and/or badly. 

Without even being aware of it, you might have been so desperate to be back in a relationship that you jumped at the first available guy or woman. You can do the same thing in your career.

When you leave one situation and don't give your body time to process what has happened, you might end up being re-hired quickly into a horrible job.

Realizing your mistake, you might start job-hunting again shortly after joining the rebound company, and what happens then? Your fear drives you into an equally bad or even worse position.

All of a sudden, your career is in freefall.

It happens every day, but you can climb out of total career meltdown. The first step is to find a way to take some of the economic pressure off.

Downsize your living situation or take other steps, however drastic, to get yourself out of Please Someone Hire Me mode. Get a roommate or sell your car.

Take charge of your life and your career! As long as you are a victim of the job market (or your perception of it, not likely to be too reliable in your mojo-depleted state) you won't climb out of the Total Career Meltdown hole.

The minute you see that you control the action and get to choose whom to work with and for, you'll be back behind the steering wheel where you belong.

You Can Even Recover from Burning a Bridge

One of the worst career mistakes to make is to burn a bridge, but you can recover from a bridge-burning incident too.

For starters, remember that showing people the back of your Levis is not always a bad thing. There are people who have hurt you and who you don't need in your life anymore.

When you realize that you don't have to tolerate mistreatment from anyone just because they give you a paycheck, go ahead and quit, even if they beg you not to or threaten you with a bad reference.

The minute you can quit, do it, and remind your body and the universe that you have higher goals for yourself than putting up with anyone's abuse.

When you quit a job working for an abusive boss, that isn't burning a bridge. You'll maintain your professionalism as you hit the exit, but you won't lie about the reason you're leaving. You'll just wish everyone well and hit the road.

Other times we might look back and say "Wow, I really did burn a bridge several years ago, and it wasn't cool."

In our office we hear from people who say "My old mentor is on my mind and I want to apologize to him or her for being such a bad mentee, fifteen years ago.

"I took so much advice and encouragement from my mentor and then I just moved on and we haven't spoken since. I feel bad about dropping out of sight."

You can always repair a bridge if your purpose is honest and not cynical. It would be horrible to write and say to your old boss, colleague or mentor "I know I've been out of touch, but now I need an introduction from you, so let's talk" and if you do that, you deserve to be ignored.

If your intention is pure, you can write a simple note that says "I often think about the great advice you gave me and wonder how you are doing." You can re-establish a relationship. There is no statute of limitation on human connections.

You Won't Recover from Falling Asleep on Your Career (Until You Wake Up!)

Here is the career mistake you can't so easily surmount. When you shut out the world outside your cubicle or your office, put your fingers in your ears and hope that nothing changes and your job stays the same from now until Forever, you are in a dangerous state.

You are hurting yourself in that state, not to mention all the people who rely on you at home.

You can't afford to go to sleep on your career and stop focusing on the larger world outside your office walls.

You have to know what kind of Business Pain you solve, and you have to know which organizations are most likely to have that pain.

You have to know the names of those organizations, and you have to know what they're up to in their respective markets.

You have to know the names of the managers who head up 'your' function at each of those employers.

You can't  be oblivious to your market and succeed, or even hope to sleep well at night. Think about a person who runs a small business. Do they know their market? Of course they do! Why would it be different for salaried employees?

You have to be intimately familiar with the Business Pain you solve. You have to know how it shows itself when it first emerges in an organization and how it hurts the business until it is solved.

You have to know how badly "your" flavor of Business Pain hurts the organizations who suffer from it and what that pain is costing them every day.

The knowledge you accumulate about your pain-solving abilities is your opening for a conversation, as well as your leverage! It is what will lift you out of Sheepie Job Seeker status.

When you get altitude on your own career and decide to take the wheel and drive, you gain power instantly.

When you run your career like a business, you gain everything you need to reach your goals -- self-confidence, negotiating leverage and direction.

Once you wake up from your stupor, you'll never fall asleep again.

None of us can afford to get drowsy and complacent about our careers, not ever again in our lifetimes.

Anyway, it's much more fun flying up here at altitude!