Be in Control of Your Next Job or Promotion

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast!

I am so happy to be here with you today to talk about something that is so common when you’re looking for a new job or your next opportunity.

This actually even applies if you’re looking to get promoted in your current role.

And that is how to avoid feeling like the job search or promotion process is out of your control and you’re just waiting for someone to get back to you or for circumstances to change, for a job to be posted, for you to be able to make the career move or advancement that you want.

I’ve heard some people say they feel like a sitting duck.

Like they’ve done everything they can and now they are just waiting.

Waiting to see if they will get called back for an interview.

Waiting for their boss to figure out if they can be promoted now or if it has to wait.

Essentially feeling like your advancement is not in your control. 

That feeling that your new job or promotion is out of your control can make you want to curl up in a ball and cry.

Before working with me, my clients tell me they work so hard for their career, the years of school, the hard work, the family time they’ve sacrificed, only to find themselves feeling stifled and under-appreciated.

They’ve applied to the jobs, had coffee-chats, asked for the promotion, and nothing is working. 

They have an interview here and there and just wait, hoping they get a good offer….eventually.

It is exhausting and feels like crap. You start to question if you’re really as good as you think you are or what could be missing that you’re being passed over.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Let’s talk about how to break out of this.

When I start working with clients and they tell me this is their experience, there is typically a blind spot they have and something missing from their strategy.

In a recent episode I talked about 5 signs you have career blindspots – you can go back and check that one out if you want to know if you have a blind spot.

But for today let’s talk about what is really happening when you don’t feel in control of your advancement and you think you are doing all the right things.

We aren’t taught how to navigate the job market effectively, what to do if your boss says no to your promotion or what to do if you don’t hear back from an interview.

A lot of the teachings I saw were to encourage women to ask for the promotion. The problem was that they didn’t ask or they didn’t have an executive presence.

That is such crap and honestly not the real problem.

We’ve been fed ineffective strategies and when you’re told over and over again the problem with women at work, you can start to believe it or give yourself imposter syndrome, you can start to doubt yourself.

And this only puts you farther behind and holds you back in your career.

It makes you interview less effectively, it makes you doubt yourself more. It makes you more frustrated and even get a feeling of entitlement.

Like you’ve worked hard, you’re good at what you do, and you shouldn’t have to work so hard to get the job you want or the promotion you want.

But that feeling, which is totally justified, doesn’t actually help you. It hurts you.

It puts you in a fixed mindset where you can’t see the opportunities you have.

It shuts you off to options and brainstorming where you just say you don’t know what else you can do.

The bad advice is still out there and it is still really popular.

Let me give you an example.

You know on LinkedIn when people like or engage with content from their connections, you can see it in your feed.

It’s actually a really great thing about LinkedIn. It allows for more networking and exposure to different people and topics.

I recently launched a Women in Pharma Spark Series highlighting some of the women I work with and the impact they make in industry leveraging this feature in LinkedIn. I want these women to have more exposure and build their network organically, so by featuring them on my LinkedIn, they get exposure from my connections but also anyone who likes or engages with it, gives that content even more exposure. This increases the people that my clients get viewed by and they are given a call to action to connect, follow or schedule a coffee chat.

Pretty cool, huh?

But this means that there is also misinformation that gets spread too.

Through this feature someone in my network liked a post of someone who is not in my network so it came across my feed.

And honestly it made me shake my head.

The account the person in my network liked was for an AI career search service.

The infographic was titled “What Does a Job Search Look Like”

It had 15 steps to get a new job! 15!

It included everything from optimizing your LinkedIn to submitting 50 applications, revamping your resume, changing your job search strategy mid-way through, making a new resume, submitting more applications, and so on.

It was essentially everything we are taught to do.

And it is the way you might be used to getting new jobs.

But it isn’t the only way.

This is why I help women in industry get out of this outdated advice and not only navigate the job market in a more simple way but tap into the hidden opportunities that don’t include any of those 15 steps.

If you’re wondering, the content of this post was supporting these 15 steps and giving readers a to-do list for each of them.

With a message at the end to be resilient and stick with it because the job search process is complex.

Ok. So I’m using this as an example of just how prevalent the generic advice is and I want you to see there is a different way.

This post I’m talking about had almost 400 likes and 30 shares. That means 30 people shared it with their network, and anyone that engaged with it, it spread to their network.

400 people liked it, and that exposed it to everyone in their network.

So it’s not your fault that you think you’ve done everything you can and there is no other way and it’s all out of your control.

You are literally being fed this by your colleagues at work, your bosses, your HR departments, and then subtly as you scroll through LinkedIn.

But it’s not the way I work with my clients.

If you’ve been listening for a while, you know that my approach is different.

When I see posts like that, yes, I shake my head, but honestly it also feels good because it just shows me time and time again how what I do is different and innovative.

How the coaching I do with clients is literally changing the industry. It is cutting down the time it takes to advance your career, it is creating a whole new trajectory for women.

I have a client who I worked with early in my business – about 3 ½ years ago and I’m going to be sharing the details of her career story in an email to my VIP insiders in a couple weeks.

But essentially, she coached with me and learned the strategies I teach, built her skills, overcame her blindspots, and she expedited her career more than you can imagine. She doubled her earning potential in 3 years.

She went from a Manager level in Tech Ops to a Senior Director, leading a department in a new cell gene therapy site in 3 years. When we coached together we got a new role created for her and a runway to 2 promotions. She credits where she is now and this 3rd promotion to the foundational work we did in coaching.

This is how you create the career you want instead of waiting to be promoted, waiting for a job to open up.

To get out of the waiting cycle and feel in control of your career, you have to stop waiting for your career move to happen and make it happen.

You have to be an opportunity magnet that is not only seen as a sought-after leader in your area of expertise …. But sees everything as a problem to be solved.

Like I said, we do this by going outside of the traditional job change process, overcoming your blind spots, and tapping into the hidden ways to advance your career as a woman in Pharma/Biotech.

When you tap into the hidden ways to advance you can:

• Get your dream role created for you
• Negotiate job responsibilities during the interview
• Offload the boring lab work to someone else and do more interesting projects
• Get a promotion when budget cuts are happening
• Expedite your career growth and double your earning potential

I’m actually going to be talking about the hidden ways to advance your career as a woman in Pharma/Biotech and the skills you need to design your unique career path and get a new job or promotion at my upcoming training on July 23rd. You can register at the link in the show notes.

Now when you hear no or don’t see your job posted, you know how to solve this problem.

You never have to feel like the market needs to be better for you to get the job you want.

Right now is actually the perfect time to work on your career and build the skills to get a new job or promotion. The market is going to shift consistently. It’s not going to go away. Being able to navigate it and feel in control of your job search now is going to make it easy for you to do when it happens again. You’ll know how to get what you want in any market.

You also want to be intentional and strategic about your career and this involves being proactive. You don’t want to wait until you’re desperate to get a new job. This only makes you feel graspy, frustrated, and literally shuts down the part of your brain that can solve problems.

Imagine being in a place where you are never just sitting and waiting.

You’re never hoping a job works out or taking a leap of faith the offer is the right fit.

When your boss says no to your promotion or project, you can make a business case that makes your boss think your promotion is necessary and suddenly that no becomes a yes.

When you aren’t finding the right opportunities and just waiting to hear from your interview, you can identify more opportunities right now. One way I help clients to do this is I have an Opportunity Magnet Framework I teach that tells you what you need to have job opportunities coming to you instead of you chasing them. When you feel stuck you gap-assess your current results against our Opportunity Magnet framework. 

I also have a Dream Job Troubleshooting Guide with 20 actions you can take right now – even when you feel stuck, uncertain, or like you’ve tried everything. 

You are always in control of your results when we work together.

You’re never at the mercy of your boss or an automated application system.

You’ve worked hard to get where you are in your career.

And you can have the job you want.

You can also feel better and less stressed now while you work on getting that next step.

You don’t have to just wait for someone to give it to you.

Once you believe you can be in control of your career, you will be in control of your career.

When you think things aren’t in your control and you have to wait, what you do is wait and feel frustrated.

See how that works? Lol.

It’s more than belief though, it’s also strategy. We need the mindset – overcoming the blind spots and we need a solid strategy that works in Pharma and Biotech.

This is why I approach coaching my clients from both angles.

This is what makes you unstoppable and literally changes what is possible for you in your career.

I just want you to imagine what it would be like if you always felt in control of your career advancement. You always knew how to figure out what you wanted in your next role an how to gt it. In any market. With any boss.

This is possible.

So when you look at your career today instead of thinking, there’s nothing more you can do.

Ask yourself, what can you do.

What haven’t you tried.

What skills do you need to navigate the market right now.

What would you do if you believed you could have that next job or promotion.

Take action from that place.

Alright, have an amazing week.