Looking for a Career Change?

It has been said in many articles and books on career change and job searches, that the time to start looking for a new job is when you don't need one and not when you are forced into one. It does not help our cause when we have a short time period to find a new job and under stress from the drastic changes in our current work, including layoffs.

Searching for a new job when you are doing very well in your current one, does not come naturally. We all love what we do and feel complacent, sometimes justifiably so, and sometimes we feel that we are too buys to add on this task. But when you search for a long before you need a new job you have time on your side and will be in a better negotiating position with the new offer. You will have less competition from your peers in your current organization than when the market is flooded with freshly laid off workers.

The first lesson in strategy is, companies that shape their future and not react to it stand to win. The same is true for personal growth. When you start early, you shape your future and not react to the unforeseen thrown your way.

I had a VP in my past career who said this when he quit,

"There are three stages to your career in any organization. In the first third you are learning as fast as you can and trying to become valuable, in the middle third you add value and make impact on the organization's performance, finally you get ready to move on, either within or outside the organization, and start handing off your responsibilities to the next in line."

These days the total length of these three stages is getting shorter and shorter, it stands at about three years. The first part is getting much shorter and corporations expect you to add value from day one and the third stage starts at about the same time as the first, with all three running in parallel.

Are you prepared?

Boulder Salary Data from SimplyHired.com

The salary data are from SimplyHired.com

Web Developer: 88K
The average salary for web developer jobs in Boulder, CO is $88,000. Average web developer salaries can vary greatly due to company, location, industry, experience and benefits.

Average salary: 49 K
The average salary for jobs in Boulder, CO is $49,000. Average salaries can vary greatly due to company, location, industry, experience and benefits.

Why join a startup

I wrote two articles, one on what you need to know about the startup before you join and the other on how the discipline of business thinking matters more than the idea. Here is a simpler advice that I received in a conversation with Professor Rashi Glazer of UC Berkeley, on taking any job i general:

First ask yourself, do I want to want to work for the company that wants me? Why do they want me? What value can I add to the company? If you cannot figure out your value added, ask them how you can add value. If there is no value added, why take that job?
The other thing to keep in mind is, you don't work for the company, you work for your boss. How do you think you will make her/him look when they hire you? If you cannot make your boss look good, what is the point?

The other advice I received is from Lynn Upshaw, another marketing processor at Haas School and a Brand Consultant.

There are things you need to care about joining a startup for your first job or when switching careers. In a small shop you do get to do a variety of things. But you have to ask who is around me who has been down this path and can teach me. If you have no one to learn from within the organization and you are learning from outside as you execute, you are not learning much. For all the bad rap on large organizations, they have lots of people who have been this path a few times. If you reach out to the right people you can learn a lot faster.