Go No Go - I am Branded

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Go No Go - I am Branded

We all create our own brand. At some stage of our career we may need to change jobs and how we nuture our brand to ride through life and career or decide to change it to suit our life’s challenges and our goals, is an important factor to take into account when you decide to quit your job for something new. So says Seth.

Seth has written a very, very interesting article here about how long you should remain in your present job. Seth says “you owe it career and your skills” to switch to a new job BEFORE you become too comfortable.

“….needs to leave for a very simple reason. He’s been branded. Everyone at the company has an expectation of who Doug is and what he can do. Working your way up from the mailroom sounds sexy, but in fact, it’s entirely unlikely. Doug has hit a plateau. He’s not going to be challenged, pushed or promoted to president. Doug, regardless of what he could actually accomplish, has stopped evolving — at least in the eyes of the people who matter.”

I agree that we should progress and build our skills and profiles but not necessarily at the expense of things that the individual concerned might regard as important to them alone. Things like longevity at a company are still regarded by certain sectors as important. I bet that not everyone on the planet wants to move jobs every 5 -8 years. Some people prefer stability and continuity in their lives so that they can raise families and take out mortgages and buy a second car, while others who may be 36 – 72 monthers thrive on the stress and challenge job-hunting and gene pool topping-up provides.

Seth also uses evolution to illustrate why we should quit and take on new challenges:” Let’s look at it from the perspective of evolution:

Species that evolve the fastest are the ones that don’t mate for life. By switching mates, swapping genes with someone new, you continually reshuffle the gene pool, making it more likely you’ll create something new and neat and novel and useful.”

OK,that is a view and if you like it, go for it. As I said above, if you are a 36 – 72 monther at jobs then constant change may be for you. But be warned. There is a limit and that limit is reached when your CV becomes a multi pager which you expect a prospective new employer to wade through.

It is seldom these days as I walk through my department that I spot staff browsing recruitment sites on the internet. If I do, I walk over and ask the person to join me for a coffee and a chat about what they are doing and why.

Years ago when I first worked in UK, I did a shocked doubletake when I first witnessed this activity and what I took to be a crass and brazen attitude by staff. “How dare they be so open about it,” I thought, “This is a personal thing that should only be done during their own time and not on business time and definitely not with company equipment. Hell I am paying them to do a job and this is how they pay me back?”

The immediate impact of the first instance wore off when I got back to my desk still fuming with rage and only just managing to keep the lid on my temper. I sat down and thought through what I’d seen and concluded that it was actually my fault as a boss that staff should want to quit and resort to searching for new jobs during office hours. As I thought things through I also questioned my alertness to their behaviour patterns. Had there been changes in their attitude, mood swing to apathetic etc etc. andf had I noticed these signs? Obviously not ,

So I made a plan to do something positive to stem the outflow of knowledge and skills while providing a workplace that challenged them everyday, stimulated and motivated them and made them want to remain working at our company. As I recognised that I had missed all the warning signs, the more resolved I became to put a stop to staff attrition through my neglect of their needs as a worker and as a person in their own right.

It is working, so do not take the decision to quit just to appease someone’s statistic fetish. Speak to your boss first.