When’s a bad time to think …
… about whether you want to apply for a job?
Answer: When the job is advertised.
Here’s a familiar scenario:
You aren’t unhappy with what you’re doing, but equally you’re not giving it much thought. You’re going along the path you’re on, whether you chose it or not, reasonably content with the status quo. You sense that you’ll want or need to make a change at some point, but you don’t feel any urgency to explore your desires and options for the next phase of your working life.
Then a job comes up which presents an opportunity of one sort or another: perhaps to take the ‘natural next step’ (as clients often call the role above them in the hierarchy), or to gain some different experience, or to move to a different organisation.
The application deadline is, say, two weeks away, which means you pretty much have to make a decision there and then whether this is a route you want to take - a decision that may shape the remainder of your working life.
If you’ve already done the thinking and therefore know what you’re after in your next career phase, it may be easy to make a positive decision to go for the job or a positive decision not to do so.
But if you haven’t already spent some time thinking through what you want from work - and whether you want to stay put or move up, across, down, out, or into something else altogether - then you’ve suddenly got an application deadline forcing the issue.
And because this is a real live opportunity, it may carry more weight in your assessment than it might have done if you were thinking about it in the abstract, at leisure, and as just one of several possibilities.
You realise it would have been far better to get the thinking done in advance, then you wouldn’t be rushing now to work out what you want to do and at risk of making a mistake.
Indeed it would.
Is the ‘natural next step’ right for you? What sort of new experience do you want to gain and to what end? What are you looking for a new role or organisation to deliver?
How can you know the answers to these questions if you haven’t stopped to think?
It is a healthy and sensible practice to reflect regularly on where you are, where you’re headed and where you want to go, even if you decide that you want to stay where you are. A career coach can help you do this thinking in a structured, supportive way. We can help you define what it is you’re looking for and equally what you don’t want to do. You will be better placed to look for new opportunities or to assess them when they come your way.
And if you’ve already found yourself up against an application deadline? Then we can still help you think through your decision right now. Better late than never.
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If this scenario rings true, I’m here to help. Just ask.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash