Want to boost your career? Fire first and aim second

Have you had enough of five point lists on how to make the leap into a new career? If you have ever considered looking into a change then there is no doubt you will have come across some point by point guide on how to sell yourself and win that great new job.

While this is often good, common sense advice, it may actually be looking at things the wrong way around. INSEAD Professor Herminia Ibarra has studied the whole issue and written about it in her book, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career (Harvard Business, 2003).

She looked into some cases of individuals who had switched careers and studied the underlying dynamics. Her conclusion was that most of us won’t suddenly have a revelation about a new career path that better fits with our passions and innate talents.

In fact, Professor Ibarra turns the whole thing on its head. What she found was that it was much more important for people to start exploring new avenues and start making changes, whether it felt absolutely right or not. That usually led to a discovery but the process was not orderly.

In a chapter from her book (posted on the FT’s website) she writes: “We like to think that the key to a successful career change is knowing what we want to do next and then using that knowledge to guide our actions. But change usually happens the other way around: Doing comes first, knowing second. Why? Because changing careers means redefining our working identity—how we see ourselves in our professional roles, what we convey about ourselves to others, and ultimately, how we live our working lives. Career transitions follow a first-act-and-then think sequence because who we are and what we do are so tightly connected. The tight connection is the result of years of action; to change it, we must resort to the same methods.”

She makes two key points:

· First, we are not one self but many selves.

· Second, it is nearly impossible to think out how to reinvent ourselves, and, therefore, it is equally hard to execute in a planned and orderly way.

She cites one example of Lucy, a technology manager who makes the shift to a more satisfying career as a independent coach. But the line from A to B was not orderly.

First of all, Lucy agonised over whether to leave her technology job and take the plunge. It was not until her husband said something to her that she made the leap.

“…one day my husband just asked me, “Are you happy? If you are, that’s great,” he said, “but you don’t look happy. When I ask, ‘How are you?’ All you ever say is that you’re tired. You leave the house every morning at 5:30 and you come home at 9 o’clock and you don’t look happy.” His question prompted me to reconsider what I was doing.”

After that wake-up call, Lucy took the risk and left her job. She had had a vague idea of where she might be heading. She had already identified people management as an area of interest and had gone back to school to study a course in Organisational Development in her spare time.

But there was no specific plan.

“I still didn’t know exactly what form my new career would take. I said to myself, “I’ll just finish my master’s degree, try to get different types of work, and see what resonates.” I started by calling everybody I knew. I went to different associations, contacted people who looked like they were doing similar things, and gradually started to build my practice.”

We have to take the plunge to start challenging pre-set assumptions and this might lead to the discovery about the best career to take.

Professor Ibarra describes the process.

“Our old identities, even when they are out of whack with our core values and fundamental preferences, remain entrenched because they are anchored in our daily activities, strong relationships, and life stories. In the same way, identities change in practice, as we start doing new things (crafting experiments), interacting with different people (shifting connections), and reinterpreting our life stories through the lens of the emerging possibilities (making sense).”

So, the first step on to a successful career shift could be to start making changes, and explore new avenues to unearth possible alternative routes.

Then, one of the key questions to ask would be: if a prospective employer (in my new field) rang an a former employer, what would he say about me.

The importance of this question was raised recently in the Harvard Business Review (January-February 2012).

Kevin Ryan, CEO of the flash sales site company, the Gilt Groupe, wrote that résumés are “good for establishing basic qualifications for the job, but not for much else.”

And he added that interviews don’t help all that much either.

“The primary problem with interviews is that it’s impossible to avoid being influenced by people who are well-spoken, present well, or are attractive.”

A reference check is the key tool as far as Ryan is concerned.

“The résumé and interview also don’t alert you to the biggest potential problems. When someone doesn’t succeed in a job, it’s generally not for lack of technical skills – it’s because of intangibles that don’t come up in an interview. Is he attentive to detail? How does he treat his colleagues? References are really the only way to learn these things. The essential traits I look for are success and passion.”

Preferably, Ryan would go to an old friend for a reference of someone he was considering hiring if he knew that the two of them knew each other. An old friend, he says, is far more likely to give you the whole truth, warts and all.

How you have behaved and performed at work remains critical even if you shift careers. It is the only marker a future employer has.

Networking is also very important whether you are shifting careers or not.

Writing some years ago about career changes, Jennifer Reingold, a senior journalist at Fast Company Magazine, put “You create the network” as her top tip.

“Most successful job seekers land their dream jobs through contacts that they’ve previously made and assiduously kept up. Susan McPherson, regional vice president at Vocus Inc., a public relations management software company, got her last several jobs through contacts and says she doesn’t understand why people don’t go the extra mile to stay in touch – particularly when they’re not looking for a job.”

So, the two most important things you might do (assuming you have a desire to shift careers) is to start doing different things and meeting people outside your normal circles and keeping up your networking contacts.

For tips on networking, you can go back to Professor Ibarra who has written extensively on the topic, as has London Business School’s Lynda Gratton.

Good luck!

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