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Dana Rousmaniere
April 6, 2015
If you re midway through your career and feeling stuck, you are not alone.
Maybe work doesn t feel meaningful anymore, or your industry has drastically
evolved, or your values and interests have changed. No matter what, your
40-something self is a very different person from the 20-something you were
when you started out. The fact that this is such a common experience doesn t
make it any easier to handle when it s happening to you.
This crisis can be a profound one. You ve invested a great deal of time,
energy, money, and education in your career. You ve established a solid network
and credentials. You may have a certain lifestyle and the accompanying
financial obligations to keep up with. Maybe you re hoping to put kids
through college and retire in the not-too-distant future. At the same time, you
realize that if you don t make a change now, you may never do it.
When you find yourself at this difficult juncture in your life and career, what
do you do?
I reached out to Patty McCord, founder of Patty McCord Consulting and the
former chief talent officer at Netflix for her advice. An edited version of our
conversation follows:
HBR: You served as Chief Talent Officer of Netflix for 12 years. You must ve
come across a lot of people who were feeling stuck maybe even some who were
having a full-blown crisis. What advice did you offer people who approached you
about this situation?
PM: Actually, I often initiated these conversations myself. When I saw someone
who seemed unhappy, I d confront them about it, and we d have a deeper
discussion about what was going on. I d find out, for instance, that the person
who was responsible for QA really wanted to be a novelist, and I d say, What s
stopping you? One employee wanted to take a six-month sabbatical to build sod
houses, and I said: You actually want to quit, so just do that go live your
life. I d sit down with people and help them plan their next steps, asking
questions like: How risky is it for you financially? I got into trouble a few
times with senior management for talking talented people into leaving. But my
feeling was why should they stay and be unhappy?
If someone wanted to leave the company to try something new, and perhaps come
back later, would you have been open to it?
Of course, but the job would have to still be open, and they would have to be
the best candidate at the time. But let s face it, people who want to be gone
six months or longer probably just want to quit, full stop.
Were there common threads among the people who wanted to make a major career
change mid-stream?
Often it was because of some outside force the death of a parent, a child s
graduation, or a spouse s layoff. A major life event usually causes people to
stop and rethink their own lives.
What would you say to people who ve advanced far in their career only to find
that it s not all they imagined it would be?
Pat yourself on the back for getting there, and then figure out where you want
to go next. These are just phases in our lives. It s not linear. Rethink what
you ve always thought about employment. One of my missions is to convince
people that just putting one foot in front of the other in the same career is
over. There s no such thing as job security, and there never will be again. In
the future, employment is going to be more of a two-way street, where you can
ask yourself what you really want from your life and career, and then talk to
your employer to find a way to make it happen.
Most companies are arguably way behind you in that sort of thinking.
They are. But, companies should start telling the truth: there s no such thing
as guaranteed employment anymore. I think companies need to stop lying about
that. People want more flexibility in how they think about work and their
careers and companies need to get on board.
I could go on and on about how badly we run HR in this country. We have this
whole culture built around the way we ve always done it, and somehow we think
it s working. We could be having a much better, more productive, joyful career
existence if companies and their employees just started talking honestly with
each other.
In addition to advising people going through a mid-career shift, presumably you
ve had the opportunity to hire some. With your hiring manager hat on, what do
you think of these applicants?
It s really important as a hiring manager to understand what success in any
given role looks like. If you understand the factors beyond the skills,
sometimes you re open to different candidates. For example, if the position
requires managing an enormous amount of money, or a great deal of judgment,
then you should look at this person s whole life experience to see if he or she
has demonstrated smart budget sense or developed good judgment over time. Often
knowing that someone has a real passion for the work might make up for a lack
of the required skills. I d almost always rather have someone with deep passion
about the work than someone who has the right qualifications and doesn t love
it.
People at this stage have maturity, experience, balance, wisdom and most
importantly they don t take work so seriously anymore. Work isn t their whole
life it s just not so dramatic. For them, sometimes work is just work.
Yet these might be people who are looking for something that isn t just work
something that s more fulfilling.
Maybe. It might be about seeking out more meaning, and it might be about just
finding something more interesting. I ve personally found that people farther
in their careers get more interested in problems of complexity and scale,
because you have more capacity to solve bigger problems and it s more
interesting. Take a classic job category like accounting. For so many years,
you re learning how to do the books, and then you might become more interested
in financial planning and analysis or how to apply your fundamental skills to a
nonprofit that you re passionate about. I ve seen people have their careers
come alive again in a different environment or context.
Are there downsides of hiring a mid-career professional?
They can be jaded. I work with a lot of startups, and the upside of young
people is that they don t know any better, they often don t know something can
t be done. Innovation comes from naivety. A 20-year-old won t hear you can t .
That could account for why mid-career professionals in the tech sector have a
particularly tough time. Tech companies seem to prefer younger talent who have
that naivety, and perhaps fresher skills, who can often be hired for much lower
salaries.
If you re going to be in the tech field, you have to keep your skills fresh or
be happy in a declining technology. It s just the way it works and always has.
You have to think like an employer and if you think you bring something that a
college kid doesn t have, articulate that so the company knows what they re
getting from a more expensive candidate. We have to get over this notion that
we re owed something because of tenure, which to a company may or may not be
valuable. Institutional knowledge is only valuable in an institution.
What s your advice for people who want to network within their sector but are
worried that word will get back to their current employer before they re ready
to take a leap?
Don t be afraid. Just do it. There s nothing ever wrong with sitting down and
talking to someone about your career. You should be doing this all the time.
What s more, there s no reason why you shouldn t have the same conversation
with your boss. Why can t we be honest about this? Secrets don t work in
employment. I was always in trouble in the companies where I worked because I
thought we should allow managers to head hunt within the company, and
seriously, if a stranger can call us, why can t we call each other?
What s your best advice for someone who needs to get out of a mid-career rut?
Start talking to people who are doing something you think you might like to do.
Go interview. If you think the grass is greener somewhere else, go munch some
grass on the other side of the fence. Finding work that you love is a fair
amount of work. So, do the work.
I fundamentally believe that you own your career; companies don t own it for
you. You should be thinking about what you love to do what you want to do
all the time. And you should feel comfortable talking openly about it. It s
your life.
Dana Rousmaniere is managing editor of HBR s Insight Centers. Follow her on
Twitter @danarousmaniere.