Beware when push could become shove

As may be commonly known, we make job moves due to a combination of “push” and “pull” factors. The “pull” factors are the attractions of the new role and the “push” factors are the reasons why we are looking to move from our present employer

My conversations with several candidates during my days at H&S and RRA showed that many of them made a poor job move when the push factors were high, especially when the person was out of work for some time and felt the need to get back into the workforce at the earliest. Therefore, their decision-making was hurried or clouded by emotions and this resulted in a job move that they would not have made in more normal circumstances.

Some of the learnings that could benefit persons who have high push factors are listed below:

Don’t make a “short-term move:  Sometimes, one may feel the need to make big compromises and take a new job role as a stop-gap arrangement. This happens more often when the markets are bad and one has been out of work for a long time. However, it is my view that such moves are not worth making since they could have longer term consequences. Firstly, the chances that one will make a success of that stop-gap role are very low because one is constantly looking for a new role and not focused on making a significant contribution to that role. Secondly, it is difficult to justify to the next employer why one is looking for a change so soon, since one certainly cannot say that “I took it up only as a stop-gap measure”. Most importantly, the short-term move will always be on one’s employment record and could come up for discussion at job interviews even a few years later. My recommendation is to be realistic about the new role one could get in that market situation and then work towards getting the best possible role with at least a 3 year time-horizon in view.

Due-diligence on new employer: It is of paramount importance that anyone making  a job move must go in with their eyes fully open and this is achieved by asking lots of questions during the interview process as well as by making one’s own investigations with former employees of the new employer, its clients, suppliers, business partners as well as anyone else who could share some valuable perspectives on that organization. Therefore, irrespective of the push factors being high, one must never lose sight of the due-diligence that one needs to do on one’s prospective employer

Maintain focus on career objectives: One’s career objectives are the 5 to 10 broadly defined parameters which one looks for in any job role. When push factors are high, one may fail to evaluate whether the new job role ticks off many of the career-objective boxes or not and therefore, it could be useful to take time out and evaluate to what extent each of the career-objective parameters are likely to be met in the prospective job role

Phone a friend: When push factors are high, our brains may become clouded by our emotions, e.g. a fear that one may be made redundant or fired if one doesn’t quickly make a move. Therefore, our ability to take a cool-headed decision on the prospective job role may be impaired. I therefore recommend that one must speak to a few close friends or mentors who have one’s best interests at heart and will give honest feedback on whether one should take up the prospective job role or not

Be realistic about new job role and compensation: Many prospective employers are very cut-throat when they are making an offer to a job seeker or to someone who they know has very high push factors. Therefore, the designation could be at the same level or a notch lower than one’s previous role or the compensation package could be lower than what one earned at one’s last job role. One may be forced to swallow a lot of pride in order to accept the terms of the new offer. I am of the view that one needs to be realistic about one’s circumstances and may decide to walk away from some offers if the compromise to be made is too large. However, for offers that are in the ball-park of one’s previous role, it may be useful to have a conversation with one’s new boss on how performance is evaluated in that organization and to understand the time-frame within which one could expect to get back to a similar designation or compensation package as one’s previous role. While the new boss would get the message that you are making a compromise by accepting the offer, it would also put a positive spin on the whole thing by focusing on the future and delivering superior performance to overcome the compromise situation

Hope this has been helpful to those of you who are currently in a “job-seeker” status. Would love to receive your comments on the above pointers as well as any other aspects that job-seekers could find useful to make a better decision on their new job role

Feel free to share this on your LinkedIn or Facebook profile or pass it on to anyone who may find this blog useful

You can email me directly at luis@frontrunner.co.in as well.

Compensation negotiations – making a smooth move

Over the years, salary packages in India have been simplified and the menu of a myriad types of allowance and reimbursements (driver, petrol, car repairs, telephone, electricity, entertainment, etc.) have now been done away with and a lump-sum Base pay package is now set which can be split into just a few allowance heads.

However, compensation packages especially at senior management levels have become more complicated and the new jargon includes terms such as ESOPs, RSUs, LTIPs, Deferred Bonus, Sign-on Bonus, Sweat Equity, etc.

I recall spending a couple of days facilitating the closure of a CEO level search assignment and the entire two days were spent first getting a thorough understanding of his complex compensation package, then trying to fit this package into the new employer’s compensation structure and then going to and fro between my candidate and his future employer to reach a meeting ground on the compensation offer. Thank God for my analytical mind and eye for detail – otherwise, it could have been “I don’t” instead of “I do” by either the “bride” or the “groom” right at the hiring altar

I have also encountered situations where the compensation discussions ended up being hard bargaining sessions, like buying vegetables or fish from a roadside vendor. And when both sides took a tough stance, egos came into play and either the candidate had to swallow a lot of self-generated pride and felt he was making a big compromise to accept the offer or the hiring manager felt that he was over-paying to close the hire. Therefore, either the candidate loses a lot of the excitement about the job move or the hiring manager gets worried that he could face uncomfortable questions from the new hire’s peers when they found out that the new hire is being paid much more than them

It is my view that the closure of hires should rarely stumble at the final stage and I recommend that if one adheres to the following steps, compensation negotiations can be concluded in a relatively smooth manner:

Share the complete picture upfront: 

When you are asked to provide your compensation details to your prospective employer (perhaps after the first interview), ensure that all components of your present compensation package are listed:

• Base salary package including all allowances
• Retirement benefits including gratuity and pension fund contributions
• Non-cash perquisites like insurance coverage (medical, life and accident), club memberships, etc
• Bonus – your actual bonus for the previous year and target bonus for the current year
• Stock Option / Restricted Share plans and LTIPs – ideally include vesting details and an evaluation of the current “in the money” value of the unvested options / shares

When your prospective employer has a comprehensive picture of your compensation package, they can take a call whether your package is in the ball-park of what they could potentially offer or not. There is a possibility that you may be dropped from consideration if you are earning much more that what they could offer. However, it is my view that it is better to run the risk of being dropped from consideration at this stage rather than investing the time of going through umpteen rounds of interviews and then facing the disappointment of getting an offer that is below what you are currently earning.

Benchmark your compensation:

I recommend that when you get to an advanced stage of the selection process you should try to collate information on the compensation structure of your prospective employer and the ball-park compensation packages that some of your future peers could be earning there.  Apart from the base pay, you should also find out information on the performance bonus structure and whether the company offers stock options, LTIPs, etc. You could obtain this information by making some discreet enquiries with trusted friends who may be currently employed at the prospective employer or who worked there recently. If don’t have such trusted friends, find one who can get you this information anonymously. A seasoned headhunter may also be able to give you this guidance. If you are moving to a new industry, I suggest you should also get some data on where the prospective employer benchmarks its compensation vis-a-vis its competitors

Set your expectations: 

Once you have the benchmarking information, you should then set your expectations of the compensation offer at two levels – the minimum that you would accept (anything lower and you would walk away) and the level at which you would be reasonably happy (expected level). However, I suggest that you should keep this information to yourself and not share this even with the headhunter involved in the hire.

Let the new employer make the first move: 

Most prospective employers will ask the candidate to state his expectations of the offer. However, my advice is that you should never state your expectations and duck the question by saying that you don’t know the compensation structure of the potential employer and request them to give you an offer instead. If you state your expectations first, then that becomes the ceiling for the compensation offer and you may be either pitching too high or too low. On the other hand, if the prospective employer makes the offer, then that becomes the floor and you can try to increase the offer if it is within the ball-park of your expectations.

I suggest that if the offer is below your minimum expectation, first re-examine that your minimum expectation is set correctly and then have one more discussion with your prospective employer to ensure that you haven’t missed out any component or mis-evaluated anything. If the offer is still below your minimum expectation, you could politely decline the offer. If it is between your minimum and expected level, then look for ways to communicate your expectations without making it sound like a hard bargain. Of course, if it is well above your expected level, be magnanimous and accept it graciously, but also make sure that you have evaluated all the key components correctly.

Use intermediaries where available: 

An intermediary can be very helpful to soften any negotiation involving money. Therefore, I suggest that the headhunter who brought the opportunity to you (if there is one) could be actively involved in the compensation negotiations. Sometimes, someone from the Talent Acquisition team in the HR department plays this role, to reach a compromise solution between the hiring manager and the finalist candidate. There is one caveat about using such intermediaries that one should keep in mind – the headhunter earns a fee for closing the search assignment and therefore, he is not necessarily fully on your side and may nudge you to accept a lower offer just to close the assignment. Similarly, the Talent Acquisition team would also like to complete the hire and move on to the next position to be filled. Therefore, use such intermediaries cautiously

Clarify all the personal related HR policies: 

I believe that just before you accept the offer, you should also clarify all the personal related HR policies – travel rules, leave, etc – if you haven’t done so already. For example, if your new job involves a lot of international travel and you have been entitled to business class travel for all long-distance flights in your present job, it could be important to clarify that your new employer has a similar travel policy.

 As always, would love to receive your feedback and comments on my blog. Feel free to share this on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter or pass it on to anyone who may find this blog useful

Getting back into the groove

I recall reading some years back that every employee will go through at least two situations of redundancy / lay-off during his/her career life-span. However, with much higher volatility in the employment market due to a variety of factors, it is very likely that you will faced with the predicament of becoming a job-seeker many times in your career. And it is becoming a fact of life that the likelihood of this happening, increases with the passing years and when one is past one’s prime, it could be more difficult to find a role similar to your last one.

Therefore, I thought that a listing of some strategies that could be effective for job seekers to get back into the workforce in a timely manner, may be interesting for many of my readers, who either may be in that predicament or know someone who could find this blog useful:

• Don’t take it personally: Any situation of forced unemployment can be traumatic and therefore, you need to acknowledge this internally and take steps to get over any negative feelings. Bear in mind that the correlation of one’s performance with being laid-off is becoming much lower because such decisions are taken to meet corporate objectives and may have little to do with one’s job performance. Therefore, never let the lay-off situation demean your self-worth

• Create Positive Energy: Your chances of success are more often dependent on how you feel internally as compared to market conditions. Therefore, it is important to view the situation (though it was not at your behest) in a very positive way, as an opportunity to reinvent your career & do something different, to take stock of where your career is heading, take that long-postponed vacation, to enjoy the luxury of time, etc.

• Perfect your resume: It has been my experience that most candidates do a rushed job updating their resumes when they get a call from a head-hunter. They just add information that is top of the mind and rarely look at the overall presentation that is being made through one’s resume. Use the time that you now have to do a thorough review of your resume, make your achievements crisper & more quantified, weed out old data that is no longer relevant (like hobbies during your school days or minor achievements early in your career). In short, spend time evolving your resume into a strong pitch document of your credentials

• Reassess your career objectives: Use the time available to think through your career objectives afresh. Take the help of a close friend, mentor or career coach to crystallize your objectives. These objectives should be a broadly defined list of must-haves for any job role and give you the flexibility to consider a range of career alternatives that meet these objectives

• Create a long-list of career alternatives: When job market conditions are weak or when the straight-jacketed career alternatives have a limited number of employers who are in the hiring mode, it is important to spend ample time making a long list of career alternatives and being as creative as possible. Unearth “out of the box options” by speaking to close friends, former colleagues and mentors.

• Decide on your “best-fit” career choices: Once you have created the above long-list, you need to analyse it from two dimensions – firstly how each alternative fits with your broad career objectives and secondly, how your credentials stack up vis-a-vis the beauty parade of candidates contending for the same role. The second dimension is harder to analyse since our self-opinion of the strength of our credentials may be out of sync with reality and therefore getting feedback from some head-hunters, close friends and mentors could be very insightful. The net result of this two-dimension analysis will be a list of career alternatives (perhaps 5 to 10 in all) which you are excited about, since they fit well with your career objectives, and also confident that you have a reasonably high probability of bagging a role. Therefore, you are now focused on paths that have a high probability of success.

• Rejuvenate your contacts: The talent acquisition process has changed dramatically in the last few years with widespread use of social networking and internal employee referral schemes. My recent conversations with several clients show that over 60% of the hires are now completed without the use of a recruitment agency. Therefore, it is even more imperative that you spend time rejuvenating your network of contacts – make a list of people you need to reach out to, get ideas on job roles and specific opportunities from them and constantly open new doors, because you never know which door could lead you to an opportunity or be one-step away from that perfect opportunity

• Reconnect with head-hunters: Despite what I have written in the previous paragraph, you must also reconnect with the head-hunter community because one of them may have an assignment where you could be a strong contender. However, it is important to note that there are broadly two types of firms in this community – the major firms which only work on specific assignments and the boutiques which are more flexible and will send out a resume to a potential employer in the hope of making a placement fee. The major firms are therefore less “job-seeker friendly” since they are responsive only if they have an assignment that fits your profile. On the other hand, if you have a strong senior level connections with a couple of boutiques, you could get them to selectively circulate your resume to potential employers, ideally after discussing the employers they would approach with you. However, choose to activate this option carefully because you do not want to be in a situation where your resume gets circulated randomly to all sorts of employers and an opinion gets formed in the market that you are desperate to find a role

• Network professionally: While many more are getting active on professional networking sites like LinkedIn, not everyone spends time compiling a fairly detailed profile on these sites and also creating a large network of connections. While the profile should not be a substitute for a resume, it should have sufficient detail so that your profile gets selected whenever searches of relevant keywords are conducted on that site. Moreover, it is also useful to get more active on local professional bodies and alumni chapters, the power of which gets lost sight of, in this online cyber world.

•  New ideas every day: You may find it useful to spend a few minutes, shortly after you wake up in the morning, thinking about new untried actions that could take, who else you could call or reach out to, who could be a good contact to develop and what is the best way to connect up with that contact, who could give you out of the box ideas on career alternatives, etc. For some, the ideation may happen in the shower, for others it may happen late at night when you have some “alone-time” – whatever works best for you. You need to be looking for creative ideas every day

• Plan your day well: Most of us keep systematically maintain our calendars when in a full-time job role. I would recommend maintaining a similar level of discipline when between jobs, so that you plan and then spend adequate time on your job search and not get hijacked by diversions that may come up during the day.

• Be patient but also persevere: When one is sitting at home with time on one’s hands, one tends to forget that others may be very busy and slip up on their committed response times Therefore, if you have been promised a response after a job interview in a week or two and three weeks go by, it may be appropriate to send a polite request wanting to know the status of the decision-making. However, one needs to maintain a tight-rope walk of being patient and continuing to persevere, simultaneously

• Use down time effectively:  Stay busy by learning a  new skill, attending a short-term professional course , taking on a new hobby or volunteering for a charity. Fill up your day so that you are using your time productively. However, this should not be at the cost of keeping ample time for your job search and have the flexibility to attend interviews as and when they come up. Also, having the luxury of time is an advantage you have over candidates who are already in a full-time role. You can be much better prepared for interviews and ensure that you are never late for any interview (ideally budget to be there 15 minutes ahead of time)

Hope this blog has been helpful to those of you who are currently in a “job-seeker” status. Would love to receive your comments on the above pointers as well as any other strategies that job-seekers could adopt to transition back into  a new role in the shortest time frame

Crafting your personal pitch-book (your résumé)

Consider this scenario: You’re on your way to work when your mobile phone rings and it is one of your head-hunter contacts calling. You have a brief chat and the opportunity seems interesting. The head-hunter requests you to send him your latest resume and you agree to send it to him the next morning. Your day goes quickly juggling between deadlines and you remember on your promise to the head-hunter on your way home. So you start thinking about what to include in the résumé and after dinner pull out an old version, add a couple of paragraphs and email the updated version late at night.

Sounds familiar? I guess most busy professionals have encountered something similar and that is why in my seven years as a head-hunter for senior management positions in India, I rarely came across a perfectly crafted résumé. I also guess that most people may not perceive what should be an obvious fact – that your résumé is your “pitch-book” document and therefore, needs to be perfect in all respects in order to make the right impression to anyone reviewing it, especially when that person is taking a decision that could be critical for your career growth.

I have had many senior management professionals asking me for guidance on a “perfect” resume and here’s some of the guidance I have given them in Q&A format. Of course, like most things in life, perfection is very hard to achieve if one’s profile could fit a number of diverse job roles, it is preferable to tailor-make your résumé for each category of job role.

Hope you find these viewpoints useful when you next update your résumé:

Q: What is the typical time taken by someone reviewing a résumé for the first time?

While there are no statistics on this aspect, I have come across many comments in networking group forums and spoken to a number of people who confirm that the first review of a résumé normally lasts between 30 seconds and a couple of minutes. This review is to take a preliminary “go-no go” decision and the person will only spend more time a résumé if it passes that first-cut test. It is only when a person is being interviewed for a specific role that the résumé is read in detail and used as a basis of the questioning during the interview. Therefore, a résumé should be in a format that is reader friendly both for a quick review and for a detailed analysis. It is also important to put your “best foot forward” by capturing some of your key strengths on the first page itself

Q: What is the ideal length of a résumé for someone who has over 10 years of experience?

A: Most people have come across a typical résumé of an US based professional – everything crunched into one page, small font, use of bold font to highlight employer names, job titles and two small tables at the bottom of the page – one for educational qualifications and the second for “Other Interests”. While such a format could work for someone who is freshly out of university, I am of the view that once a professional has over a decade of experience, the one-pager doesn’t capture adequate information on the person’s work experience and critical information may be left out if everything is compressed into an A4 page.

I have also come across the other extreme where people try to cover up quality with quantity and have a 7 to 10 page resume. Such documents either have too much information or too much of white spaces, both of which are not reader friendly.

The ideal length could be around 2 to 3 pages. It could stretch to 4 pages if one has over 20 years of experience with several job roles but that should be the upper limit for a résumé

Q: What are some fundamental do’s and don’ts that apply for all résumé?

A: Accuracy – It is a natural tendency to exaggerate one’s achievements a little in one’s résumé. However, it is very important to avoid this tendency and ensure that your résumé is 100% accurate. Every piece of information presented in the résumé should stand the test of “drill-down questioning” and if one is unable to give credible responses when an aspect of your résumé is probed in detail, it will mean a loss of integrity and very likely result in the opportunity going to someone else. A simple test is to ask a colleague or close friend to review the résumé to check for possible inaccuracies or exaggerations and to then correct the potential misunderstandings in your résumé

Spell-check: This is a very basic need but is often forgotten by many professionals. I came across a résumé of a Head of Marketing for Credit Cards where the word “Platinum” was misspelt in several places and this made me reject the applicant. Apart from spelling mistakes, please also check for grammatical errors. If the Queen’s language is not your forte, ask someone whose linguistic skills are strong to review your résumé. This is particularly important if you are being considered for a role in an international firm and there could be people from diverse nationalities involved in the selection process

Personal information: Most Indian employers today adhere to the US “equal opportunity” code, where an employer is not allowed to discriminate anyone on the basis of race, creed, marital status, sexual orientation, age, disability, etc. While an US employer is not even allowed to ask questions relating to these aspects, it is common for Indian employers to find out such information during the interview process. However, I find that some résumés contain too much personal information – it could be OK to put one’s date of birth and perhaps marital status on one’s résumé. However, listing information on parents and siblings or one’s spouse’s occupation is certainly not needed and could be seen as a sign of weakness – that one needs to put this information to try to bolster one’s professional profile.

References:  Many résumés have a line at the end of the document – “References: will be given on request”. To my mind this is superfluous. It doesn’t make much sense to list out the names and contact details of a couple of referees either, apart from trying to impress the potential employer on one’s connections (again a sign of weakness). Both these practices are archaic and in today’s world it is quite common for head-hunters or prospective employers to conduct a 360 degree reference check with upto 6 referees in all. Therefore, there is a need to choose the referees carefully depending on what a prospective employer needs and not provide them upfront in one’s resume.

Q: What should be the outline of one’s résumé?

A: For senior managers with over a decade of experience, I believe the following outline would be quite ideal:

• The Heading could be “Résumé – First Name Last Name” with a line below listing one’s personal email ID and mobile number, so that this information is easily accessible
• It may be good to start one’s resume with a snapshot of one’s professional profile – not more than 5 crisp bullet points.
• The Professional Profile snapshot could also be replaced with a Career Objective statement but be careful to amend this when submitting the résumé for different kinds of roles
• This could be followed with an “Employment Summary” table summarizing one’s various job roles in reverse chronology – Employer name, Designation, Start Month & Year and End Month & Year. If one has had multiple roles with the same employer, list out all the roles because it shows that one’s performance has been rewarded through promotions or job rotations. Such a table is very useful when someone is scanning your résumé for the first time, since it gives the reader valuable information without having to plough through the rest of the résumé
• The next section of the résumé – which would be the longest in the document – is the descriptions of each job role (see the next Q&A). If one has over 15 to 20 years experience, then some of the early roles may not be very relevant and therefore only the last 15 to 20 years could be listed in detail with the prior experience captured in a couple of lines. This will also help one to keep the résumé length to not more than 3 to 4 pages.
• The penultimate section is a summary of one’s academic qualifications. Only university level qualifications or professional credentials like Chartered Accountant, etc. need to be listed.  Even if one has topped the examinations at the school-leaving level, the information is not very relevant for anyone taking a decision on one’s career at the middle or senior management level. It is preferable to mention the year of passing for each academic qualification (unless one is trying to hide one’s age!!). Also, if one has pedigree academic qualifications (IIT + IIM or University level gold medals, etc.) you could list your qualifications above the Employment Summary table so that you can impress the reader upfront!!
• “Personal Data” is the last section where you should list a postal address. Mentioning one’s date of birth & marital status is optional, as discussed earlier. If one has a foreign sounding name, like mine, mentioning the Nationality may be recommended especially if one has studied and /or worked in different countries. Finally, you could list a few pastimes and hobbies which you are involved in today and not those you were involved in as a student!!

Q: What are the important aspects to list for each job role?

A: I recommend that each job role should ideally capture four aspects:

–        One line stating the Designation, Name of Employer, Location, Start Month & Year and End Month & Year. If one has had gaps between job roles or if one doesn’t remember the exact month when a job move took place (this could happen if the move was internal), then listing the Start and End Years (without the month) could be acceptable.

–        “Job Metrics” – a couple of lines on who you reported to, how many persons were in your team and/or your span of control, all in one sentence to summarize your job role.

–        Responsibilities – only the main ones should be mentioned and try to merge overlapping areas to keep this to not more than 5 bullet points

–        Key achievements – This is the most important part of the resume and often missed by many professionals or is improperly worded. The contribution made by you personally and the impact of the achievement (% revenues grew, amount of cost savings, % increase in customer satisfaction or employee engagement, etc.) needs to be brought out succinctly. Again, use of bullet points is recommended and list 5 or 7 main achievements, unless one has spent many years in the same role (which in itself is not a good thing, because it indicates stagnation in one’s career)

Q: How often does one need to update one’s résumé?

A: Even if one is not actively looking for a job move, it is preferable to update one’s resume periodically. This will ensure that you always have a high quality and updated resume at hand, to submit to anyone if needed – responding to a call from a head-hunter or applying for an internal job posting. It also ensures that one doesn’t need to do a rush job to meet a head-hunter’s deadline in the midst of one’s work pressures. I would recommend that one should update one’s résumé at least once a year and perhaps review it every 6 months.

A fall-out benefit of updating your résumé is that it could lead to some introspection about the direction of one’s career and help in proactively planning a career move – internal or external. If there is no change in your résumé after a year (no new achievement or responsibility to add to the list) it could be a danger signal that one’s career is stagnating. Alternately, if one has had an excellent year of achievements, which may be difficult to surpass in the coming year, it could be a good time to make an internal or external move as well!!

Hope this article has helped you to improve your personal “pitch-book” document

As always, would love to receive your feedback and comments on my blog. Also feel free to share this on your LinkedIn or Facebook profile or pass it on to anyone who may find this blog useful

You can email me directly at luis@frontrunner.co.in as well.

Rolling stones gather no moss

I read somewhere that young professionals entering the job-world today will have made 10 to 15 career moves by the time he/she is 35 – that’s an average of just a year or 18 months in each job role. Life-time loyalty to your employer was an attribute that professionals of an era long-past were proud to have and over the years the trend seems to be going to the other end of the spectrum. Life-time loyalty also came with the comfort that your employer would never fire you, except if you knowingly violated the law or breached the company’s code of ethics. However, in this day and age, every professional needs to be prepared to face redundancy several times in his/her career

Despite the back-drop of lack of loyalty both by the employee and the employer, I feel that frequent job moves could have very negative consequences on one’s career in the long-run. Apart from making it difficult to explain the frequent job moves to a prospective employer in the future (especially if the move has been for a small raise or a small step up the career ladder), the professional would have failed to establish a track-record of performance in any job role, which resulted in an internal promotion.

My conversations with many employers have shown that they consider a 3-year stint as being the minimum threshold to establish that someone is a high-performer. The first year is seen as a “honeymoon” period where the new employee is getting to know the organization and may demonstrate a few flashes of performance but the expectations of the new employer are not high. It is in the second year that the new employee demonstrates performance and the third year establishes whether the employee can maintain a consistent track-record of high performance or not.

I have come across several average performers who make moves every 2 years or so, because they realize that they need to make a move before their inadequate performance is discovered and they are fired

Therefore, if one has not spent at least 3 years in at least some of one’s job roles, and ideally with an internal promotion in some of those stints, it would be difficult to demonstrate to a prospective employer, 15 or 20 years into one’s career, that one is indeed a high-performing manager. Moreover, one runs the risk of being clubbed with the rolling stones who move every two years because they are not gathering any moss!!

Taking the plunge

I have been thinking of writing a book focused on senior management careers for some time but the economics of spending 6 months writing a book just don’t add up, literally!!

So I have decided to share some of the knowledge that I have gained as a senior management executive search professional and more recently as a career coach, through the blogging world. My intention is to write a short piece two or three times a month and hopefully my viewers will find my blogs useful when making their all important career decisions

It is my view that the decisions one takes for each career move, whether internal or external, are as important, if not more, as the performance one demonstrates between each career move. My conversations with hundreds of senior management professionals over the last 7 years have led me to the conclusion that many professionals are not proactive about their career moves and often dont take a well-considered decision, especially when the push factors to look for a new role are high. Therefore, they leave their fates to luck or good fortune and the consequences of just one wrong move can be quite dire, because it could take years to make amends and get one’s career back onto the fast-track

So am hoping that through these blogs I can provide some useful perspectives to my viewers. Feel free to comment or subscribe to these blogs if you find them useful