Preface

You’re a manager, an executive, or a professional on a management track, and now it’s time to take that next big step. What’s your best approach?

The process for searching for a new job or exploring a career change for you will be quite different from other employees. Surprisingly, you’ll find very little current, reliable, and accurate information on the subject directed at your level.

Most of the books in this genre, though well-intentioned, are written by academics, psychologists, journalists, or recruiters and convey theories about what they think you should do, or give narrow, one-sided views, or cover the subject with a generalized, one-size-fits-all approach.

One size doesn’t fit all. This I know because of my own experience from:

My own job and career changes at the executive level.

Being on the other side of the table as a recruiter participating in countless interviews by the recruiters who worked with me.

Participating in candidate interviews with our employer clients.

Coaching and working with other executives, managers, and senior staff to help them make job or career changes.

Too many people change jobs to get away from the ones they have or to move to “just another job” for some short-term reason. They usually do so without a long-term career plan that is based on understanding their strengths and preferences.

The purpose of 12 Steps to a New Career: What to Do When You Want to Make a Change Now! is to help you make a life-changing leap from thinking of changing jobs as “a job change” to thinking in terms of a career path that will lead you to finding a job you can say you are eager to get up every morning to do, love what you do, and believe you are blessed with being able to get paid to do what you do.

This book will help you make your job or career change match your goals and desires regardless of whether you’re a 30-year-old new manager or a 50-year-old seasoned executive. It is divided into five conceptual sections and 12 chapters. The five sections will help you to quickly grasp the overall process. The chapters will help you to achieve the objectives in each section by covering what you need to do, why you need to do it, when you need to do it and, finally, how to do it. Your journey will reflect a sequential process, each step building on the last, eventually taking you through a linear approach to Chapter 12, where you’ll roll it all together into a strategic action plan.

I’ll be your career coach in this book. I’ll explain how each step in the process works and why it’s important. I’ll give examples of how to do each step, and then I’ll guide you through a few exercises that will help you learn by getting you actively involved. I’ll then share real-life experiences showing how others have been successful, and how recruiters and employers make their decisions.

To help you understand my vantage point, here’s a bit about my journey. I left as partner at Arthur Young & Co. (now Ernst & Young), a Big 8 accounting firm at the time, after 15 years, including five years in charge of the firm’s Saudi Arabian practice.

When I left the firm, I didn’t think I’d have any trouble finding a new job. Unfortunately, I left during recessionary times. Outplacement was in its early stages of development and I hadn’t even heard of it yet, so I started doing the usual things you think you need to do when you look for a new job. I called people I knew to tell them I was looking, and I started sending letters to recruiters and employers.

I found that most of the books and advice about conducting a job search were more appropriate for younger and much less experienced people. The advice directed at senior levels was contradictory, one-sided, and based more on theory than actual experience.

During this exercise, I found that my logical career progression—a senior financial executive—wasn’t right for me. I moved to the UK and started an executive search firm with an international focus. I concentrated on learning the executive search business and creating processes that would consistently result in our being able to evaluate and recommend top candidates for our clients.

Shortly thereafter, I co-founded a career consultancy with a colleague, Jane Bartlett. Although I enjoyed the search business, I soon realized we were competing with other search firms that didn’t share my ideals of integrity and professionalism. Jane took the lead role in developing the career consultancy, and we worked together to create a career search program specifically for executives and managers, which we fine-tuned over six years. During the seven years that I headed our UK search business, I found myself most energized when I was giving career advice to executives who didn’t make it to our shortlists. In the process, I found my true passion: coaching senior-level people going through their own job transitions and career changes, just as I had done.

When I returned to the United States, I restructured our program and expanded it to reflect the 12 steps that job seekers and career changers should go through, based on my real-life experiences. I found that, if they followed these steps in sequence, they accelerated the process of finding a new job or making a career change.

I’ve attempted to take the mystique out of how the job market works for senior-level people and debunk the often-heard myth about “hidden” jobs. I’ve heard recruiters give great advice to executives, but, as a recruiter and a career coach, I know much of that advice can be self-serving.

In this book, I explain what works and what doesn’t. I strip away the jargon and mystique. I share with you insights about decisions you’ll never hear from others. This information will positively impact your search for a new job or a new, rewarding career.

One note on my use of pronouns: Rather than write “they” or “he/she” when referring to a single person of unidentified gender, I use the common practice of randomly choosing either “he” or “she.” It’s simpler.