The author is an expert in the job market
One evilThe sands of what is known as the “new world of work” is the legend that short terms and frequent transitions between organizations are no longer a problem, and even vice versa. The priests of the New World – among them people who have worked all their lives in one company and those whose experience as employees is short – have read somewhere that experience in a variety of fields and professions helps people “pinpoint” their careers, and they pump out the gospel.
But they invented something completely different. Frequent transitions between organizations give rise to a career path that severely undermines the potential for development and earning, and the major casualties are those who skip between sectors, professions and occupations. These brand themselves as employment UFOs without a distinct professional backbone, and therefore employers who do not know which professional slot to associate with are flipping through the next candidate.
Spending years bouncing
Even those who care to skip “only” between organizations and not between sectors, industries or professions, will also harm their careers and salary potential, including those who move between large and branded companies, especially those interested in advancing to management positions.
why? Because every transition between organizations resets the promotion clock. This means that in the new organization one starts counting from the beginning the time until the next promotion, which means that all the time spent from the last promotion until the transition to the next organization goes down the drain. So if it’s not enough to not advance in the transition between organizations, any career transition actually pushes the promotion away instead of into it. Of course, the side effect is also salary cuts, unless your relative salary is significantly lower, because his height is a function of the job and not of the skills. Therefore, even very talented people who are stuck at the same organizational level will be bound by the salary range accepted in the position and will have a very hard time breaking it, despite high capabilities.
The absurdity is that many leave organizations only because they have not been promoted fast enough for their liking. They do not take into account that the new employer is not interested in that they have been waiting for a long time. For him, they were recruited for the specific position at a specific organizational level and their promotion will be considered only after they learn the new position, begin to yield value over time, and prove that they are worthy of the next promotion, if any. All this takes much longer than they have left until the next promotion in the previous organization, if only they had waited patiently.
What reinforces the absurdity is the fact that the larger the company, the longer the promotion processes in it in the first place. Because of this, it is precisely in transitions between large and high-quality organizations that the price of too short terms is much greater, certainly in terms of the steepness of the promotion curve.
So what if the promotion curve flattens out? The main thing is that in the end we will succeed in advancing to the peak position we have set, at most it will take us a few more years. So this is, no. First, because in the labor market, employers insist on matching age to the organizational level and are not happy to deviate from it, so if you have wasted years of skipping years, chances are you will be found unsuitable due to age. Second, a realistic “career time” is given and can not be extended, so a promotion curve that is too flat will not leave you enough time to realize your promotion potential.
Hit the promotion ceiling
And what if the chances of being promoted in the organization where you work are slim? Assuming you have not yet reached the peak of your promotion potential and you are still stuck, there is no choice but to change organization, despite resetting the promotion clock. It is just important to make sure you choose a large enough employer with promotion options, otherwise you will hit the promotion ceiling very quickly and have to move again. But before you move, make sure you reach the real peak so you do not skip between organizations in vain. How do you know? Looking around. If enough older people than you are promoted and you are not, the climax is probably behind you.
Remember, a career is the opposite of what you thought. Successfully.