Discover Your Next Best Role

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. This week, we’re going to dive into one of the most asked for topics and reasons that women in pharma and biotech reach out to me for help. And that is to identify your next best role. Whether you’re feeling stuck right now and not sure if you should stay, feeling like you’re not making a big enough difference, or just looking to drive your career forward with a clear destination, this episode is for you. If you’re new to me, I was in the industry for 12 years, doing everything from working with QA auditors and non-clinical toxicology studies at a leading talent and development in biologics for AstraZeneca. My background is in training and career development in the industry, and I’ve worked in all different phases and therapy areas. I’ve worked in smallish biotech companies, contract organizations, and in big pharma. I also have a master’s in organizational psychology. I remember sitting in my large corner cubicle, having gotten promoted a few months before into a job that I actually wrote the job description for, with one of the best and biggest pharma companies in the world.

Then there was this thought, is there something wrong with me? I wasn’t happy with my job. Here I was in the job I wanted, but most days felt like I was fighting an uphill battle with my male colleagues and female colleagues, and female colleagues sometimes too, who didn’t seem to deliver much work, but somehow got the credit for our or my deliverables. I was excellent at my job, and I’m not someone who’s just going to go and brag about myself, but I was actually very good. I worked very hard to be very good at my job, and I really cared about being excellent at my job. But I was fighting for a seat at the table, dealing with a boss who was often in chaos, emailing after hours with last-minute changes to a presentation I had to do that next day, which, of course, then put me in a cycle of always checking my email at night, fearing I’d miss something and not be prepared. If I was honest with myself, even though I did get the job I wanted, I never thought it was my dream I came from a family whose values were that you get a job with good benefits, and enjoying it or feeling purposeful was extra, a pipe dream, a unicorn job, icing on the cake, as they say.

Not the most important part. And I did have a great job with great benefits and a great salary. So I wondered, is there something wrong with me that this isn’t enough? Why couldn’t I just be happy? The truth was that I wanted to make a bigger difference with my I wanted to feel that feeling like I belonged, like a shirt that fits perfectly, like it was just made for your body when you find that. That is how I wanted to feel about my career. And I couldn’t get it out of my head that If I was thinking this, if I was wondering what else was out there, well then maybe, just maybe, that that voice is there for a reason. So it was in that moment sitting in my cubicle reflecting on what I achieved and that question, that nagging question, that I decided to answer it. I decided to stop asking myself if there was something better for me, if I could find that ideal job that fit the perfect shirt. I started looking for answers instead of being all up in my head about the problem, having analysis, paralysis, and just being on this merry-go-route I did not want to be on anymore.

And it took me a while. What I did was I started entertaining every that was of interest to me. It was essentially a whole lot of trial and error. I knew that I really liked coaching, and I offered this, this coaching service in my role when I worked at AstraZeneca. So I decided to get a certification in Career and Life Coaching, and I fell in love. So I decided to start taking clients at night. I had to do this anyway in the beginning in order to be certified, but I loved it so much that I started doing it more. But I was really scared to explore it any further. I was straddling the safety of the job I was in and the excitement of the job that I wanted. I was worried that I couldn’t coach people the way that I wanted to, that I would still be in a box following the corporate rules where H. R. And your boss has to know what we talk about. And I doubted if I could actually change my career. I had a great job and I was worried that I’d go all in on something else, the thing I truly loved, and I’d fail at it, that I’d have to go crawling back to my job.

Okay, there are worse things than that, right? Crawling back to your good job. But my brain can be very dramatic. It wouldn’t have been humiliating to me. That’s what my brain was telling me at the time. So I stayed stuck and thought about leaving. I was finding compromises, trying to force myself to be happy where I was, and I’d have good days and bad days, which just made it more confusing, right? But then the thought changed from, is there something wrong with me? To, you’ll never know unless you try. And that is what got me into problem-solving again. Instead of what I was doing, which was coming up with all of the reasons why I couldn’t be a coach full-time, why it was wrong to leave my job, and how I’d be letting everyone down at work, I started exploring what it would look like if I decided to leave. It was that planning and switching to problem-solving with a little help from my daughter, who wished for Christmas that I would leave my corporate job and that I hired a coach to hold me accountable and prevent me from backing out on my dream, that I was able to make that leap full-time into my dream job.

Now, the big revelation that I had in my journey was that the inner voice I had was there for a reason, that there was something more for me, that desire for a better career. There was a purpose with that. And you have that, too. That is your intuition, the authentic you. When you have that voice questioning if there’s something different for you, something better, if it’s time to make a change, it’s guiding you to something better, and it’s important to listen to it. In a world where we’re told what to think, what to do, what to feel, we lose ourselves. When we’re in mom mode, people-pleasing mode, when we’re doing everything for everyone else, we lose ourselves. But if I hadn’t gone on this journey, I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now. And the reason why this is so relevant and necessary to understand is that you’re here listening to this for a reason, too. Just because what you’ve tried hasn’t worked for you or you haven’t figured out what you want yet, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t an answer or that you can’t have it. It’s just that you have to shift into solving the problem.

My journey wasn’t a straight A to B. It took time, trial and error. But what I learned is that once I knew what I wanted my career to look like, everything else fell into place. I was able to have higher, more complex problem solving instead of the basic problem solving of, should I stay? Should I go? I don’t know what I want. Those are problems that you can solve. And then once you do, then the problems that you solve are around how to make that happen. Imagine having a conversation with your boss and they’re supportive of your development and even of promoting you, and you’re able to tell them exactly the type of work you want to do. Not just the title and the money, but the new growth and visibility that you want to gain. You’re able to tell them exactly how your next role will help the company. This is how you get promotions and roles created for you, even with budget cuts and layups going on. Otherwise, what happens is your boss could be so supportive of you, supportive of you getting promoted. But when the role isn’t already open or needed or it’s not clear how your role would change and you’re not compelling in sharing a business case, what happens is your boss can ask for that promotion, but it’s likely denied because of promotion cycles, budget constraints, and so on, all of the excuses that you hear.

Or they don’t even ask at all because they don’t know what you truly want and they’re not confident that what you want is actually a good idea. Now, imagine you’re looking for a new job, and you see some jobs that you’re qualified for, so you go ahead and apply. Your resume is filled with everything you could do. It highlights just how accomplished you are. But you get less interviews because you’re not specialized. You’re either told that you’re overqualified or underqualified. When you do get an interview, you’re so focused on answering the right way and trying to get an offer, trying to get them to like you, that you come off as not being a competent expert or the right person for the job. Because you’re more focused on what you could do and that you could do that job than knowing it’s the right one for you. Now let’s imagine you’re doing your annual development plan and goal setting. Instead of putting a strategic goal for what you want and enabling your leadership to help you get access to the right projects that will drive your career forward, you put something generic that you think you need no matter what.

It’s something like improving your communication skills, working on more visible projects, or mentoring an intern. The difference between the promotion, new job, and development plan that sets you up for success, and being told no to promotions, the lack of interviews and offers, and passive growth, is knowing what you want your next role to be. That is so critical. It is the foundation. You can tweak your resume 100 times. Ask your boss 100 ways for the promotion, or ask the most strategic projects to be put on your plate. But if you don’t know your why, if you don’t know what you are driving toward in the impact that you uniquely want to make, it’s not going to get the results you’re looking for. So naturally, the next question is, how do you know what that next best rule is? What I suggest is that you look inward for this, not externally, to decide. The common way that I see women answer this question, what I even saw encouraged when I worked with HR, and what I did myself, is to look to organizational charts for what’s possible for that next role, to see what roles exist, to look to the paths of their mentors or colleagues to see what they did, to look to what you’re qualified for, to ask your boss for what options exist.

But here’s the problem. This isn’t focused on what you want. It’s not setting you up to be a strategic leader. It’s keeping you boxed into what is possible based on outdated org charts that, to be honest with you, aren’t fixed and you can have roles created for you. It’s focusing on what other people did when most people don’t make choices based on what they truly want. So you might spend all of your time and effort trying to get into a role you discover isn’t actually fulfilling, and then you have to surf the process all over again. And listen, we are taught from a young age what success looks like, what enough money looks like, when we should be getting promoted to be considered good, and what a good job is. But what about what you really want? With my clients, they sometimes find that they don’t need to leave the job or company that they like to get the growth that they’re looking for. Once they know the answer to this question, we can modify their job or get a new one created. Instead of going after all the jobs you could do, you only go after the ones you want.

And that makes you more compelling and confident in the interview process and leads to more offers. You save so much time by not trying to fit yourself and your resume into some arbitrary box. So how do you answer the question? With my client, I take them through a process to create their unique career protocol. The career protocol is a four-step process that starts with exploration and identification of their strengths, values, interests, and experiences. Consider it like pieces of a puzzle. We don’t want to start with asking, what do you want or what do you like? Those are vague and generic and big questions. And if they were easy to answer, you probably would have been listening to this, right? So we want to go deeper than that, like mining pieces of the puzzle step by step. We want to let go of what we’ve taught to do, which is look to everyone else and look to ourselves. Then we want to analyze that information to reveal the type of work that you want to do, the type of manager you want to work for, the type of companies that are a good fit for you.

The career protocol is a just really powerful decision-making tool. Now, this simplifies your job search and allows you to tap into the hidden job market, have a competitive edge, be able to talk about your transferable skills in a way that makes you more qualified than those of direct experience. Instead of answering the question like, I don’t have experience in X, but I do have experience in Y, so I know I can do it, and I’m a fast learner, that isn’t a good response. It’s not compelling. Instead, you build strategic relationships that will be your allies for your next role. This industry, specifically, is so well connected that your relationships are really important to get a new job. I’ve had people tell me they didn’t get the job, not because of the qualifications, but because of the relationship that the hiring manager had with the other candidate. I saw this happen all the time when I worked in corporate, too. The leadership teams, especially, were filled with former colleagues of other leaders. But when you don’t know what you want, as far as the problems you uniquely solve better anyone else and the type of culture you do best in, what happens is you cast your net too wide.

You end up getting burnt out or not making the right relationships. And honestly, quality matters over quantity. It’s not enough to know that you want to be promoted or that you want to work in quality control, not in this job market. You get better results when you are crystal clear in what you want and why. Think about how differently you would talk about yourself, the different questions you’d ask in the interview review how confident you’d feel if you knew without a doubt what you wanted. It’s a game changer. If you want me to help you identify your next best role, I have a proven process that always works. It’s called your career protocol. You can send me a message on LinkedIn. Let me know that you want your career protocol and we can talk about it further or head to my website and you can learn more about how we could work together. At a minimum, if you want to try to figure this out on your own, like I said, I did this for me. It is possible. It just took so much time and a lot of trial and error. I’d start by looking at the problems you want to solve, what you’re better at than anyone else, your interests, your skills, the impact you want to make. That will give you a start. More than I ever had back in my corporate days when I was working on this for myself. All right. Have an amazing week and I will talk to you soon.

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