Burnout City

I was talking this past week with another career coach about how companies are demanding more and more and more from employees. And are getting it.

A client I'll call Bob who wants to leave his current job talks of how his manager expressed extreme disappointment that Bob would not make himself available via computer on Thanksgiving Day for software developers at work in China, if they should need him. Bob was not having family in from out of town but claimed plans that he couldn't break, because he was astounded his manager thought he'd readily be available on a holiday. Bob was normally available many weekends during the year on top of his usual 55+ hours a week, but this was a holiday and everyone was talking about their plans. His manager didn't stop there: "So I assume you'll make yourself available, then, the rest of the weekend?" Bob declined and is working even harder to find a new job. He says, "Whatever happened to boundaries around a big holiday?" and "They can't pay me enough to live like that."

Then there's the 25-point list of desired tech skills that we see in software development job postings. The company is asking for things that rarely go together: either the client hasn't lived long enough yet, or the shifts in their (very normal) career have precluded that they learn all 25 things on that list. Clients ask, "How can these companies find anyone who has all this stuff?" Depending on the local job market, they can.

Why do companies, especially software companies, do this? Well, what they've done is merged two or three jobs into one. This saves a huge amount of money, and it means that through extreme multitasking, the person can get many things done. These things may not get done very well, and the worker may not find it very satisfying, but hey, that person will be able to turn out something. For one salary.

There's definitely a push-push-push of professionals today at a level that was once reserved for their very highly-paid executives. Some companies and industries will say "That's how we work in this industry." But it's all by the seat of the pants and it's panic-driven. It's what Stephen Covey would call Quadrant I thinking, which is reactive, it's operating in response to crisis, it's putting out fires. It leads to burnout and exhaustion. There's little investing in their people for future returns, which Covey would call Quadrant II, the kind of thinking and managing that's proactive, re-creative, and into planting seeds for the future. Too few companies in any industry in the US are in Quadrant II. Shareholder demands create a "this quarter" mentality.

Maybe we can try something new: No work after hours. This might mean that people can actually get away from their work for possibly half of their waking hours (based on a typical six hours of sleep that many get today), so that their brains get a rest and can be sharper when they actually do sit down to work. That would still allow for a nine-hour day at work.

Pulling people away from their families over and over again creates Burnout City: downright poor management of time and people. It hurts professionals and their families, who feel caught and exhausted and never quite dis-engaged from their work. And companies lose good people.

Over time, no one really wins.

It's Only a Business Decision

Sometimes people aren't comfortable doing a job search when they're gainfully employed and their job is "OK". Not great, but "OK". They feel they are being unfaithful to seek out or to consider another opportunity. Thus they put it off, even if the handwriting is on the wall, even if the layoff e-mail has gone out.

OK, I'm supposed to say that's admirable. But today, I don't say that. I say "That person is being reactive and is not managing his/her career". Today, I say "Why aren't you advocating for yourself?" What are they waiting for -- someone to painlessly hand them a new job?

Instead, they, you, need to be thinking ahead, for yourself, all the time. In some parts of our country, that's essential to career health.

So yes, I'm suggesting you be unfaithful, if you want to use that term. I'm suggesting you say you have that dentist appointment when you really have an interview. I'm urging you to network with people all the time, even occasionally on your company's time, because when else can you do this? When done judiciously, this is necessary sneaking around. And you have to do it in order to protect your best interests.

Maybe my own experience colors my view: Almost 30 years ago, my dad put in for a transfer with his company (Sears) from New York to Florida. He'd been there over 20 years, and was unabashedly loyal: he was even on the company's regional sports teams, and our home had only Sears products. The company culture for years had been "we'll take care of you". Except, that culture was changing in the late 1970s. Suddenly everything was "Don't take it personally, it's only a business decision". So they denied the transfer and he was stunned, heartbroken. How could this happen after all he had done for them?

And I've seen so many clients today in the same position. It's all too rare to have someone approach me to say "I've got to get out of there while things are still good, because I'm seeing the signs that they won't stay good, for me at least." That's what more people need to see, and need to say.

Why should you put loyalty second to your career? Because that's how you put yourself -- and your family -- first. You need to advocate for yourself in today's career. Your town won't do it for you. Your neighbors, your Aunt Lucy, and last of all, your current company won't do that for you.

The day a company says, "John, we're thinking of laying you off, what do you think?" is the day I'll change my mind.

For all good (and some dumb) reasons, companies have to reorganize, reassign, and reduce. They call these business decisions. Because they are.

In the end, by taking control of your career, you are making a business decision for you and your family, your future. Your career funds your life. It's what's necessary for you and you must advocate for yourself.

They company or organization will find someone to fill your position, and they'll go on just fine.

You have to make sure the same thing happens for you. And only you can do that.

Devastation

You call in tears, or close to it: The Perfect Job went to someone else. After all this time, after all the networking, after all the networking group meetings, after all the mental reframing and resume re-writing and interview practice, after all the interviews, after all the thank-you notes, after canceling the sailing trip so you'd save the money, after the family talks about tapping the 401Ks, after all your hoping and daring not to think that you'd get this job for fear of jinxing it, you didn't get it.

You use the word devastated. As in, I am devastated. You ask, How could they not pick me? It was perfect for me. How could they? And then: what do you have to do these days to get them to see how good you are?

I could tell you to buck up and put this behind you and remind you about those other prospects and those other interviews, and how I understand because I've been there, too, but I will save that talk for another time. For now, I listen. I groan with you, for you. I say useless things like "I feel so bad that it worked out this way, with all that you have to offer." I let you vent and vent, and let you talk about your family beginning to doubt you, about how you are beginning to doubt you.

Then, when you pause, I gently interrupt to tell you that I don't doubt you, that you have the same skills and successes and talents to offer that you did before you got their rejection e-mail (yes, that's how they do it now). You listen but I know your pain isn't letting you take it in.

You're human: you want to avoid pain. But there is no avoiding this. A wise woman once told me, There is no way around pain, there's only through it. I hated the comment at the time, but later realized she was right. The only way to deal with it is to look it in its face and say OK, here you are. Because then, and only then, it will finally go away. Trying to avoid it only makes it a bigger presence in your life.

So right now, your pain is preventing you from really hearing good things about yourself. But after that lump in your throat goes away (it will) and you grudgingly decide, Well, I have no choice, I'd better move on from here, I am betting you cast your line about and remember my words. And I am hoping the words serve as the first little breeze that starts to refill your sails and which gets you to realize, and say, I'll be OK after all.

The Grass is All the Same Green

When I probe a client for the reasons they want to leave their current job, I sometimes hear, "I want to leave because things have changed there... they no longer treat people like they did years ago." And: "They are cutting back on our benefits." And: "They're outsourcing so much work to people in other countries now, my team's jobs might be next...." Mid-level managers as well as executives bring up these issues.

Then I ask a few more questions. "Do your friends in the field tell you what's happening in their companies? How similar or different is it there?" The client admits their friends are saying similar things, but that it's not as bad at these other companies.

To which I say, "yet". That's because these changes are ubiquitous. Companies are cutting benefits such as pensions; even municipalities (e.g., Worcester, Mass.) are dropping health care for those employees 65 and over, essentially saying that Medicare will have to take care of them. Competition and mere survival is driving the changes.

The temptation to escape such change is totally understandable. Who wants to worry about losing good benefits or losing a job? So, the thinking goes, let me leave this place and go somewhere where change is further away.

Except eventually it will catch up to you, at the new place or the one after that.

So what to do? Continue to learn new skills, go to seminars, keep your network alive between job hunts, adapt, stay ahead of the wave of change. Change will always be licking at your heels so don't try to flee from it. Instead, stay in control of you, which is truly the only thing you can control. Keep yourself marketable. And if you don't want to, then consider retiring or changing your expenses picture so that you don't need to work.

So when should you leave if it's not for the above reasons? Here are a few things to look for: If you're getting bored on the job, if you feel like you're coasting on the job, if there's little new challenge, if the company stops investing in or developing its people, if the company is losing sale after sale and isn't changing things to fix the situation, if your company or organization is putting out less-than-cutting-edge products or services.

Those are the real signals, the early warning signs that you should leave, if you want to continue your career. And these warnings usually appear well before the ones that tell you things aren't the same.

Yes, I hate to tell you, things have changed. They won't be the way they used to be, either where you are now or on your next job. They never will be again.

Reclaiming Your Central Vision

A teacher friend who specializes in working with children with learning disabilities wrote to describe a recent seminar she'd attended. Her excitement was palpable: at the seminar, she learned that children under stress don't see the same way "normal" kids see; they tend to see off to the sides in a way that prepares them for "flight or fight". So they miss whatever is straight ahead of them, such as the printed page. And thus, their learning suffers. Educators who know about this new research can better help such students overcome this problem.

In many ways, I think, the job search does the same thing to adults. This is less of a phenomenon brought about by vision than by emotion. In other words, the stress of job hunting can cause people to not see what's right in front of them, and to be distracted by things off to the side.

So, for example, instead of "seeing" that networking would get them closer to 80% of the available openings, candidates spend almost all of their time replying to posted jobs, which represent only about 20% of available openings "because then I feel like I've done something", as one candidate recently told me. An activity that's small and concrete right now (answering ads) feels better right now than a more productive activity (networking) that's amorphous and longer-term. Sigh. And I scratch my head, mystified.

In our feelings-based, short-term oriented culture, it's today that matters. It's as if the job hunter says "I don't care that my brain knows that the job search is a marathon, my gut tells me to sprint because at least for a little while I'll feel like I'm getting somewhere". So they look off to the side.

I say, Try to look at how you spend your time during the search as Mr. Spock would: totally logically. Reclaim your ability to look front and center at what's really important here. In this aspect of the search, that reclaiming of your central vision is useful, very useful. Even vital, for your financial and emotional health. Go against the tide of feeling-good-for-now, look front and center, and you will land sooner. And oh, how good that will feel.

When Hope Gets in the Way, or, It's OK to Be Selfish

Of course, I'm a big fan of hope. It's what keeps us going as humans, even in our darkest hours.

But sometimes hope gets in the way. Such as when you hope your current employer changes their salary structure. And you hope your manager stops micromanaging you. And you hope the company would just be more ethical, or more innovative, or more expansive, or more serious about your career development.

When you realize that none of those Big Things About the Company is going to change, you have a choice: either continue to hope they change, or leave. Now this is often where clients say "But I've never been a quitter; I don't want to leave the company in case things really do change."

Quitter?! I'd argue you are already giving up if you're sticking it out waiting with hope that things there will change -- and in doing so you've given the company more credit than you've given yourself.

Yes, companies can change course, but my experience is that too often clients would rather hope than see the reality, and would rather stick it out than launch a job search. Meanwhile, what they're becoming blind to as they are hoping are the changes in their field that demand they pay better attention to their own career. Too many New Englanders hoped that Digital (DEC) would turn it around, and while hoping, their own skills began to stagnate. Don't let this happen to you.

So I say "Sure, hope", but make it more about yourself and what you want for you and your family. It's OK to be selfish in that way. In your one life, who will take care of you if you don't?

Water on Stone

A former client called me to work on a new job search, so I went to her file to review her resume, which we need to update. I was caught by surprise when I saw the resume I'd done for her in 2004: it looked very different than the resumes I do now.

Yet in no way did I consciously say "I'm going to change resumes now", any time in the three years since then.

There were no moments at which I said "OK, here's something different".

Instead, I just continually try things in response to what I hear from hiring managers, recruiters, interviewers, and HR. After all, they're the ones with the jobs. And their work keeps changing, their companies or organizations keep changing, their customers or clients keep changing, the jobs they create keep changing. And it's usually in the same way: a very little at a time. So subtle, at times, that you don't notice it.

Like the earth shifting on its axis ever so slightly each day, we don't notice the daily change until we've experienced it for a while: until it's still light at 6pm when just a few weeks ago, it was dark. It's a good model for the job market: there are constant shifts and tweaks and slight changes, until we look up and say, "Wow, this is different!" and "Whoa, who changed things?"

We all did. And we all do: a little at a time. Until it adds up, and it rocks us.

A Coach's Pain

Despite all its joys, sometimes this profession is a painful one. If I can presume to speak for others in the career choice and job search coaching field, I would say we can't help but feel pain for our clients and also absorb some of their pain. In fact, there are professional seminars that help coaches "take care of ourselves", and these are well-attended.

Yet the worst pain is when we see clients making their searches harder than they need to be. There are many varieties of this, sad to say, but the biggest one is that people can't -- or won't -- change.

The engineer who won't see that his field is shrinking and salaries are dropping, and holds out for one of the few remaining jobs, against fierce competition that always seems to get there before him. The sales manager who won't shorten her resume and declines to add her field's current key words. The tech support manager who pursues the corporate ladder his father climbed instead of the lattice that it is today which sometimes means lateral moves in order to grow.

Now we are not therapists, but qualified career coaches do have enough training that we can see when there are deeper issues at work. So I ask clients questions they don't expect: "Do you want to find a job/better job?", because maybe they really don't. And, "What's in it for you to use this method that isn't working? What does it give you?", because maybe there are benefits in their approach that I'm not seeing.

This is a pivotal point for such a client: They will either see the need to change or they will dig in harder. Most decide to "try something new", however small. And that little step of change opens them up to other steps, and success comes more quickly.

But sometimes the person just can't do it, just can't try a change. Despite their pain they cling to what used to work even if it clearly is not working now. They stall, and their job search stagnates. They are running in place but won't stop. That's where the pain for me really comes in: with only so much time in the day, I have to shift away from someone who needs me yet who won't do what's necessary for today's job market. When a career coach is working harder than a client, it's time to divert priceless energy to the many clients who will change and try new things and succeed.

Change is the only constant. The pain of making the necessary changes is only temporary, like the shot you get before the dentist does tough dental work on you. In the same way, that transitory pain hurts far less than the pain of not changing one's career approach, which is persistent and draining.

Now if I could only put that analogy in a pill, I'd give it to every job seeker I could find. It would take away their pain, and mine.

Certain Gifts

The technical marketing manager came to the weekly job search networking group late, unusual for him but a common occurence with members having interviews, so I assumed that's what it was and didn't think much of it.

Later, during a break between networking activities, he pulled me aside to apologize. Almost everyone in the group, which changes somewhat with every meeting, is incredibly polite this way. Being without a job is humbling in many ways. "I'm so sorry I came in late", he began. "But I thought saving a dog's life was a valid reason for being late!", he said, breaking into a proud grin.

Saved a dog's life? "Yes, our neighbor's dog ran out on the ice in a nearby pond, and she fell through. I thought she might be able to get out, but after three attempts, I saw she couldn't. I saw her, so I carefully inched my way out on the ice and grabbed her." On that cold morning, the dog certainly would have died if he hadn't seen her out there struggling.

It's funny how things work: if he'd been working, he never would have seen her and she would have died, and no one would have found her, and her family would have been in agony, putting up posters and calling the pound.

To save the life of a dog, a family member. In the grand scheme of things, if there is such a design, could this be the reason for his layoff? Or the reason he decided to attend the networking group that morning, which he wouldn't have done had he not been laid off?

Sometimes even painful things are gifts.

Energy Concerns

"I hate this process", the client I'll call "Kim" said, pausing after each word for emphasis, voice strained with pain. She repeated it, with even more vehemence: "I HATE looking for a job", and, "It only makes me feel lousy." And "Why does it have to be so hard?"

I had no answers. She was venting, and listening is part of what I do because it helps. Perhaps my listening would help her blow of some of this froth of anger, this negative energy. It IS hard, even for someone as bright and talented as Kim.

And therein lies the nature of the process: energy. And pain. And in the end, at some mystery date that feels like it will never arrive, joy.

This is about the energy part. If Kim keeps gathering her energy into her anger and frustration, it will keep that anger and frustration alive. Like a flame with just enough air and fuel, it will continue to burn. And while doing so, will take energy away from other, better, and more productive things, like making that cup-of-coffee appointment with a person who's a possible link to a new job. The energy is better spent on such activities because 5 minutes of face time is more powerful than an hour on the phone.

In other words, put the energy where it should be: in effective search activities. No matter how hard it is, you have to do this. No matter how much work it is, you have to do it. Because to do otherwise -- meaning, to do nothing, or to avoid the necessary activities, or to sputter and fume at the process -- will put your energy elsewhere.

And seeing as how you have only so much energy, save it for what's going to help you.

So smother that flame of frustration. When you find yourself thinking, "What's the use?", cut short that thought, and replace it with "I have to do this. It's the only way." Take it on faith -- yours, or mine if you'd like -- that you WILL land a job, that it IS hard work to get it, that there's NO way around the pain except to march straight through it.

And when it's over, I'll celebrate with you.