As an employer, I’ve met with many candidates whose career journeys are impressive and demonstrate an aspiration to learn and grow. But, occasionally, I come across talented individuals who have made choices that don’t harness their skills or abilities. Allow me to share some insights.
Recently, I received a CV. The finance-major candidate had joined a home appliance company on her graduation from a top university in 2004. By the time of her departure three years later, she had already stepped into the role of finance supervisor – a seemingly smooth and promising career path.
To my surprise, her next move was to join a book retailer whose only non-salary benefit was an employee discount. She worked there for three years at a salary only half of her previous one. For her next career move, she accepted an offer from a local pharmaceutical company with the same job title of finance manager, and has worked there ever since – at a salary that remained frozen for a decade.
Her career had forward movement to be sure, but none of it was upward
While I don’t know her story in full, what I am sure of is that over the course of nearly 20 years of work she didn’t think clearly or thoroughly about her career plan. Her résumé bears the weight of those 20 years of work, but it is not weighty enough to boost her into a more valuable job, and she is now facing a mid-life career crisis. She has switched industries but her roles have always been at the same level and ranking. There’s forward movement to be sure, but none of it is upward.
Making choices
Not so dissimilar is the case of a candidate I interviewed the other day. Her résumé was pretty straightforward. After graduating, she joined a Hong Kong accountancy firm for three years and was promoted to senior auditor; she then switched to a much smaller local accountancy firm and had been there for just seven months. I asked her impression of her first employer and she replied that the company had been a decent one. Then I asked her why, if her former employer had been satisfactory, she had left anyway. She confidently asserted that she was looking for exposure to new service lines and more challenges.
It would have been a perfectly reasonable answer, yet I pointed out that while her first job had been auditing IPOs, her second job involved less challenging auditing work. If she had wanted continuous learning and career growth, why quit the first job? And if the second employer had offered a better role, why was she now looking to leave after only seven months?
From reviewing her cv, this individual, while showing promise as an auditor, didn’t seem to have thought her decision through. There are myriad reasons for leaving a role; both your head and your heart have a say in a decision to depart. And the choices we make, whether cautious or impulsive, may not always turn out as we might hope.
In this instance, and after talking at length about ambition, and the merits of embracing challenges rather than shying away from them, I gave the interviewee the job; her intelligence and solid professional knowledge assured me that her career would accelerate rather than stutter to a halt.
The four rules
Good career planning is built on four pillars. First, starting from your first job and your very first day of work, you are already beginning to build your own résumé, so make sure you make the best of these first few chapters in your career story.
If there’s no obvious change in your title or pay, there’s no good reason for job hopping
Second, growth in remuneration and role is an important factor, and should be carefully considered in any job move. If there’s no obvious change in your job title or pay, then there’s no good reason for job hopping.
Third, once you join an industry, try to stick with it rather than keep changing tack. Even though industries do not vary much from the point of view of accounting standards, a switch of business sector may mean losing the important resources, contacts, connections and other invisible takeaways you have already accumulated.
Fourth, and from this experienced interviewer, a word of advice: never tweak the truth when talking about your work experience. Be honest about your skills, your abilities, and your exposure. If your career has gone off track, then acknowledge it to yourself as well as the person you hope will employ you.
