Checklist for Changing Jobs

Last Friday I got a call from one of my old acquaintance who wanted to meet me for a discussion.  I make it a point to keep on meeting people almost 3-4 meetings a week whereby it is not about my agenda but their. We planned to meet up on Saturday morning for a coffee. The discussion came around to changing jobs. It struck me that whenever one is at a critical point in one’s life and career most of are seeking advice from people who have been through more and can share their experience with us.  I have been doing it for the past 20 years and have always come out richer through these meetings. This blog’s genesis was this discussion.

Most of us change jobs at least 6-8 times in our career of 35 years, though the latest data says that today’s generation will have changed jobs at least 10-14 times by the time they are 38. 1 in 4 people are leaving their current employers in the first year itself. It becomes imperative that we build our skills of looking for the right place to work to lead a happy life. A great “Fit” in the job gives satisfaction to the employee and improved productivity to the employer. Here are the few prioritised checks you need to do before you sign on the dotted line :

•  Look up your prospective boss on Linked in (that is an easy one but many of us miss it, check for any recommendations from his earlier sub-ordinates)
• Look up our prospective colleagues on Linked in (now how many of us do that?)
•  Pick up the phone and call their salesperson to sell the product to you ( you will know many things about the culture and the product)
• Walk into an office of the prospective employer  and feel the energy ( Ya! Ya! It matters and also it is more that touchy, feely, it will give you an idea of your fitment into the culture), ask to meet the Branch Incharge
• Speak to at least 3 ex employees of the company and listen to their unsaid feelings
• Speak to the earlier incumbent , if possible ( he will be easy to track through Linkedin)
• Look up the latest news and the latest numbers on internet
• Challenge the HR guys to share with you the performance management  system, their HR policies
• Have lunch in their  cafeteria
• Pick up the this/last year goals of the erstwhile incumbent (it will give you an idea of how tough/easy the job is, much more than what everyone has been sharing verbally with you)
• Ask for every promise being made on the compensation aspect (especially the variable component’s dependency vectors and last year payout methodology and actual monies paid out )
• Answer few questions for yourself:

o   Does this job fit into my long term LIFE Plan?

o   Where will this job lead me to?

o   Will it make me happy on a day to day basis?

o   Will I be proud of my association with this organisation?

o   Will it make my family happy?

Happy signing on the dotted line!!

Building Competencies through Experience Maps

  

Many HR Heads are struggling with the answer to providing career paths to employees. Employees who are hi—pos (sorry for the terminology with which many may disagree) want to see clear direction and something they can look forward to stay in the company. Most of them behave like mercenaries, extremely good in performance and showing a lot of potential but for their wares they demand promotions and nothing less. Promotion for everyone I n corporate world automatically means better designation, bigger car, higher bonus and more money, lastly the respect they get from their colleagues and sub-ordinates. If you do not provide the path or promotions, they are very happy to knock on the next door where a higher designation is available. This round robin continues and puts us in a big dilemma of buying or building talent. Depending on the organization hunger, need and the phase most managers take call suiting the situation. Most of us generally agree that we would like to build our own talent but give opportunities to employees from outside to take on higher positions paying lip service to building Talent.

In case we want to build talent we have to take a slightly organized and longer path, this pays in the long term, we all know that from our own experience. Most of the HR Heads struggle to build a great career path for the employees, we build great presentation(s) on the number of years taken for one to move designations but few would map out the experience we should gain to move to the job role. If we have personal mentors they normally guide through the games of snakes and ladders for us to know the right path to our ultimate destination. It is a known fact now that to build competencies we have to have particular kind of skills, knowledge and behavior but these have not been mapped out for various job roles in a company.

 

Would it not be wonderful if some of those paths are simply put together by the organization and shared with larger audience so that they can know what they can do to get the next job, having gone through particular kind of experiences. Let us take an example of Director – HR, if one was to know that to become Director – HR in a FMCG company, she must have managed IR experiences at the manufacturing location, should have experienced one Long Term Settlement, one full year of experienced manufacturing cycles, been a part of new initiatives of TPM, Lean management or other production techniques, run the welfare and other programs for workmen, experienced participation in Union – Management committees and taken tough decisions of convincing Union Leaders on an item of contention then a lot of resistance from Management Trainees to go to a plant would be overcome . A clear experience map will ensure that management sees the person in various kind of situations to make up their mind on which edges of this diamond need more polishing to decide on the development journey. I am sure we can all draw out similar maps for our functions, it is not a difficult task. Marc from Talent Management Group and self have been talking and working on these for a while. It takes time and thinking through, it is a lot of hard work, alignment and agreements on future capabilities but in the end it is worth it.

The experience maps can make our job a lot easier as managers. We can have easy dialogues around next job and promotions, a clear indicative path with experience map laid out can determine for us the next set of experience our subordinates must take to vie for our job.