Why Nobody is Tapping You on the Shoulder (for a New Job)
Have you ever thought this:
“I’m struggling because I don’t know what I’m doing wrong – when it comes to getting a promotion, building my internal brand or getting the right role for my experience.”
It’s common that we want to move into more impactful work; have your title, compensation, and responsibilities match what you're capable of. But it's hard to know what you're supposed to deal with. Because there's just no playbook about it. That’s why it feels opaque and confusing.
You're either in a state of doing things that may or may not move the needle, or you might be frozen or ignoring it all because it's just so overwhelming.
And that can end up feeling like you're treading water in your career…
OR worse: Falling behind–seeing others with your background getting the roles that you want–humble bragging on LinkedIn.
Because you see, situations like these are very common in mid-career:
You have a milestone birthday and you wonder where you're headed in your life and in your career.
You got passed over for a project, a new role, or a promotion. Or you didn't make it through the interview process as you wanted.
You're eager to tap into more.
Executives have coaches and mentors.
How about people who want to become executives?
Or executives of their own career destiny?
It takes meaningful strategic next steps toward optimizing your potential. And you're gonna need that “hell yeah”, “hear-to-slay” attitude, or begin to cultivate it so that you're on fire about the value that you bring, where you're going, and how you're going to get there.
Opportunity Won't Fall In Your Lap
Here's the truth: No one gets to a high level based on sheer luck. NO ONE.
Opportunity – It's really NOT going to fall into your lap.
That's a bummer at first because we want things to happen organically and randomly.
And wouldn't it be amazing if we had a fairy godmother appear, wave her magic wand, and say, “Hey, you're the Princess for the night, go party!”
FACT IS: Barring fairy tales, no one will ever be more invested in your future than you are.
It’s true that there are people who are going to be mentors and want to see you succeed. But you will have to give them the direction to help them help you.
This means taking initiative in your career
Not just doing your role so you're set up for promotion, boosting your internal brand, having a million coffees, or networking all the time.
Because as you notice, every character that you’ve rooted for in TV or in Films took the initiative.
Think of Katniss Everdeen. She volunteers as a tribute to save her sister.
Olivia Pope jumps into action on a weekly basis to save the president and the nation.
Elle Woods made the decision to apply to Harvard Law School. (Granted it was to win back a guy and not be the next Ruth Bader Ginsberg, but I digress)
That's how we can have life imitate art. Because the key to a stellar career route is the same as making great heroin–taking initiative.
This doesn't mean that you're going to the boss saying “Hey, where do you need me? Put me in coach, tell me what I need to do.”
It's still putting the onus on your boss or your manager to define what they see for you.
The Key to a Stellar Career Move
In our early careers, we were more prone to pinballing from this job to the next job. And that was pretty much acceptable because you're in discovery mode around what it was you wanted to do.
But at a certain career level–mid-career specifically–if you want to be seen as a leader, influencer, or somebody impactful in your role or organization, that’s not cute anymore.
And that means we need to reverse how we do things.
In the past, in your early career, these things happen:
A half-baked idea of how this job will work out for us.
Blindly going for what the next rung is just because it's the path of least resistance.
Defining success as more money without necessarily considering the impact and meaning of the work, where it leads you, and how it taps into your unique skill set that's so much more sustainable over the long run. (But not to say money is not important)
Now, define what kind of role you want in the future. Not just the next role, but the one after, or even to where your career ends up ultimately. And then work backward to the role that you need next that sets you up for that role.
Optimizing your impact based on your value proposition
What you do best in the world – capitalizing on the skills you've honed over the last 7, 10, or 15 years of working. Defining your values and finding what positions, teams, and a mission aligns with them. Being crystal clear on what you do every day – your actual actions and tasks. And being clear on what new skills you need to develop to get you to where you ultimately want to go.
With all that understood, then be strategic about which organizations (within your organization or maybe it's out in the big wide world) and which roles in those organizations you need to be targetting.
And then making meaningful connections in those organizations with those people, and pitching what you offer. That's the future that you see – the value that you bring to those decision-makers or people who can connect you to those decision-makers.
That sounds all well and good. There is a framework to define all those things about a future career in the long term and the short term.
All the answers are already in you
That's the great thing about mid-career. It's a time when you have so much more information and input about what drives you, what you're great at, and what you enjoy. And that lets you be more clear, and therefore more selective and strategic.
How to Communicate your Value in a Career Move
But there is a key thing that is going to unlock all these opportunities. The thing you can't totally define on your own.A place where you need an outside opinion to get the right message across.
And that's: How to communicate your VALUE in a career move.
It's during a promotion, getting a new role at an organization, or just trying to brand yourself to be more effective in the organization you're currently in. It's great to have your dream role totally teed up for your network and for your stakeholders. Defining what you do, and where you're taking the organization.
But at some point, the question is going to come from a decision-maker, and it's going to be this…
You want to be CMO, or Head of Finance, or Director of Product…
Why you? How are you different from the next person?
And that's why knowing how to communicate how that dream role that you tailor to your own abilities is going to help that current organization you're trying to rise in, or the new one you're trying to join.
And we can do this in lots of different ways. Many of which I go into in my weekly AC Electric Career Storytelling Newsletter.
But here's the big nugget that I am going to reveal here:
You're not the one who defines your value.
You can start that way, it's important for you to know what it is that you're good at, and how you are the most effective when you do your work. But it's actually your audience, the decision-makers are trying to reach, they're the ones who define it.
Now, there's a distinction to be made here… It doesn't mean that you as a whole person is defined by them.
It just means that once you know who you are, and what you do…
Your next move is to have strategic conversations
Connect with people in your network who work at the places that you want to work at (or places that are like it), or people at the organization (within your organization) that you want to join and help shape.
Talk about what they need and value, how they define success, and what they want to see in their organizations… and then you frame your value in their terms.
For example, you've got the greatest stability with product branding. You are in love with the branding process, and the story – you love it all. And you talk about it this way: “I'm great at telling stories. It's my superpower.”
But when your audience is hiring, when your boss is thinking of solutions of who to bring onto the team… is that person thinking strictly, I think someone who's great at telling stories.
They're probably thinking about a couple of other things:
What's the point of those stories?
What are the results of those stories?
The answer is, to increase ROI, to drive engagement with a new product, to 2X this quarter's launch numbers.
Each decision-maker and organization is going to have success metrics. And it's your job to learn them and connect your value to those desired results.
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I'm excited for you to try it in your own world.
You haven't missed the boat. Because mid-career is like a boat that's out there in the middle of the ocean, and you're somehow supposed to find your way on board.
It's normal to wonder what the next right move is or how to make it to the next level. Every week I share tips, tricks, hacks, and how-to’s in my Tuesday newsletter. It's a pocket coach delivered to your inbox with short little videos, podcasts if you're on the go, or five-minute reads that unlock things like:
How to get your boss to listen to you.
What to do when you're not invited to the meeting.
How to control your narrative at work
Lots of other topics.
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