Resources

Career Change

A career transition can be more than a search for the next job. It can be an opportunity to take greater control of what comes next.

For most successful professionals, the career plan is fairly straightforward. Work hard. Take on more responsibility. Build a reputation. Develop expertise. Move into bigger roles. Director becomes Vice President. Vice President becomes Senior Vice President. Maybe eventually the C-suite.

And then one day, sometimes without much warning, the plan changes.

A company restructures. A division is sold. Private equity comes in. A new CEO brings in a new leadership team. Budgets are cut. Priorities shift. Positions are consolidated. Suddenly, after 20 or 30 years of building a career, you’re looking for what’s next.

The natural reaction is understandable: Find another job. Update LinkedIn. Call the network. Talk to recruiters. Start watching job postings. Try to recreate the position, compensation and seniority you had before.

But career transition can also create an opportunity to ask a much bigger question: Do I want my next chapter to look like my last one?

The Higher You Climb, the Fewer Seats There Are
For experienced professionals, a job search can be particularly frustrating. There are simply fewer opportunities as you move higher within an organization. A Director searching for another Director or VP role may find dozens of qualified people competing for a relatively small number of positions. A Vice President may spend months waiting for the right opportunity to appear. For senior executives, searches can be even narrower and more dependent on timing, relationships and organizational circumstances.

And there’s another reality that’s difficult to ignore. Even after you land the next position, many of the factors that caused the last transition still aren’t under your control.

You can perform exceptionally well and still experience another restructuring. Your company can be acquired. Your boss can leave. Your division can be eliminated. The strategy can change.

That doesn’t mean corporate employment is a bad choice. For many people, another leadership role is exactly the right next step. But a career transition creates a rare opportunity to consider alternatives while you’re already standing at a crossroads.

What Have You Actually Built During Your Career?
Here’s an interesting exercise. Forget your title for a moment. Think instead about what you’ve accumulated.

You have industry knowledge. You understand how companies in your field operate. You know the terminology, competitors, suppliers, customers and trends. You’ve probably hired people, managed people and developed people. You’ve seen great leaders, and you’ve seen hiring decisions that didn’t work out.

And you’ve built something else that may be even more valuable: relationships. Former colleagues. Customers. Vendors. Competitors. Industry peers. Executives. Managers. Rising stars.

Most professionals think of those relationships as a network that can help them find their next job. But what if that network isn’t just a job-search tool? What if it’s the foundation of a business?

Consider Sitting on the Other Side of the Hiring Table
Executive search offers an interesting alternative for someone with significant industry experience. Instead of competing for another position, you help companies fill them. That may sound like a dramatic career change, but in many ways, it isn’t.

Imagine you’ve spent 25 years in manufacturing. You already understand what separates a strong Plant Manager from an average one. You know what a Vice President of Operations actually needs to accomplish. You understand quality, engineering, supply chain and continuous improvement. You’ve probably interviewed candidates yourself. You know companies in the industry, and you know people inside many of them.

Those experiences have value in recruiting because the business isn’t simply about matching résumés with job descriptions. It’s about understanding what a company needs and identifying the person capable of delivering it.

That’s consulting. The deliverable just happens to be people.

Your Career Experience Becomes the Starting Point
This is an important part of the FPC model. A new owner doesn’t necessarily abandon the industry they’ve spent decades learning. The opposite is often true.

When developing a new recruiting practice, FPC looks at the owner’s prior work history, industry experience and market demand to help establish the market or discipline the office will pursue.

In other words, you don’t have to throw away 25 years of experience to become an entrepreneur. You can build on it.

FPC then adds the recruiting methodology and infrastructure: training in recruiting, building an office and managing the business, followed by ongoing education and support.

And because FPC offices can exchange jobs and candidates across the network, the opportunity isn’t limited entirely to the relationships one owner brings through the door on day one. Your network becomes the starting point, not the finish line.

One Placement Can Lead to the Next
There’s also something fundamentally different about a relationship-driven search business. A consultant may complete a project and then need to find the next engagement. In recruiting, one successful assignment can naturally uncover another.

You place a Vice President of Operations. That executive later needs a Director beneath them. A company that hired one engineering leader needs three more. A candidate you developed a relationship with becomes a hiring manager several years later. A satisfied client introduces you to another division.

And recruiters can have several searches moving through different stages simultaneously. One assignment may be sourcing candidates while another is interviewing and a third is approaching an offer.

When the work is done well, individual searches aren’t necessarily isolated transactions. They can become part of an expanding web of client and candidate relationships. That’s how a professional network can gradually become a business-development engine.

The Question Isn’t Simply “Can I Find Another Job?”
You probably can. The more important question may be whether another corporate position is what you actually want.

Maybe you still enjoy leading a large organization. Maybe consulting or fractional work is appealing. Or maybe after decades of building value for other companies, you’re ready to build something you own.

Business ownership isn’t easier than employment. There are no guarantees. You have to develop clients, solve problems, build relationships, manage people and accept responsibility for the results.

But you also gain something that can be difficult to find in corporate life: greater control over the direction of your career.

So if you find yourself unexpectedly, or intentionally, in career transition, perhaps the first question shouldn’t automatically be, “Where can I find my next job?”

Try asking something different: “What have I spent my entire career learning, and how could I build something around it?”

Because the layoff, restructuring or career change you never wanted might ultimately create an opportunity you never would have considered otherwise.

And perhaps the goal isn’t simply to find the next company that will hire you. Perhaps the goal is to make this the last time someone else gets to decide when your career changes.