I received a no-reply email from Andrew Seaman, an editor at LinkedIn News, with a question:
What’s your advice for people making a shift right now — whether it’s landing a new job or making a career pivot? What’s the best advice you’ve received when it comes to making a job move?
Here are my thoughts.
For 15 long years in my previous marriage, I dreamed of divorce. I waited and waited for the right moment. But there were always circumstances and obstacles. At some point, I realized that this was never going to be the right time, and I just filed for divorce.
If you think that marriage and work have nothing in common, you are wrong. They are both an important part of our lives.
We often sense that something is wrong. We can even understand that it would be nice to change jobs. But we don’t do that. Once again, we’re waiting for the perfect moment. And to be honest, it’s scary. Right?
So, what do we do? We pretend that everything is fine. We take our time and wait for something to happen, for someone to do something for us.
We can wait forever, or we can start doing something for ourselves…slowly…step-by-step: make a resume, look for vacancies, go to an interview.
A few years ago, I was almost a pro at filling out job applications. Every time I saw an interesting to me vacancy, I would ask my husband, “Should I apply?”. He would answer, “Yes, it doesn’t hurt”. Sometimes I heard back from the employers, the other times I didn’t. I just kept doing that, just kept going.
Finally, I stopped applying. I simply couldn’t because of the green card paperwork. However, at that time, I managed to improve not my classification, but my job performance. And as a result a year ago I became a full-time employee.
My advice is not to you (I try not to give unsolicited advice), but to myself – make a goal, write a plan, move step-by-step, and don’t give up.
