It took me years to comprehend and digest a few questions that always disturbed me during my work career:
- Why do people function so differently in the corporate world compared to where I was coming from?
- How people can spend their whole life in the same organisation and get retired after that. Isn’t it boring?
- Are they less competent, lazy or content?
On the other hand, I found that when it comes to people skills, particularly networking, leveraging, and influence, my value system was very different from the one I was thrown into. If you happen to be unhappy with your job and you are surrounded by the fears of joblessness under the given market situation, before turning in your resignation, take a look at these tips on how to keep your position and still hunt for better opportunities.
1. We’re as Good as our Last Appraisal
I’m not kidding. We’re as good as our last performance review. Even if you were top performers for 5 years in a row, if, for whatever reason, we did not manage to get a top rating this year, we’re doomed. And to play the rating game is like being in a war zone; it’s a blood bath out there. All companies are not the same. Some get tensed as to what has gone wrong and where and they start working on such candidates.
We may think that in our amazing company, they really sit down and evaluate all our results, compare them with our peers, iron out the differences in work plan and workload, and give you a fair assessment on where you stand. If we go to work thinking that at the end of the year, this is how the evaluation will be done, we are in for a huge setback. So, the message here is the stay consistent if we’ve performed well over time.
2. People are Nice to Us Only …
Is that true that people behave nicely to us only when we are influential or when they need us? Once the need or influence changes, so does their behavior. Some people who become our best friends over time as we work with them day in and day out for years, would not even stop saying “hi” as soon as our role changes.
As if that wasn’t enough to shock the living hell out of us, more time passed, and before we knew it they were back on our team, with a bang, having the audacity to become our best friends again. This is nothing else but serving their self-interest. I’ve experienced this twice and I’m still baffled as to how people can manage such an extreme level of fakeness. Maybe they think I suffer from memory loss?
3. Promotions = Performance or Perception?
Promotions are made on performance or perceptions? What does that even mean? At best they are linked to the perception of our performance. We all view things with our own perceptive lens — my map of the world could be drastically different to anyone else based on my values, beliefs, experiences, culture, and communication. People including our bosses judge us for the impression we leave at our workplace, the way we network and the people we hang out with during working hours.
When we are working in a diverse, multi-ethnic organisation where people come from all sorts of cultures and backgrounds, the way each person views the world, filters information, processes it, and then makes meaning out of it could differ significantly. Perception is reality. It is imperative that we portray the right perception of our work and results to the decision-makers who matter and will decide on our promotion.
4. Mistakes are forgiven for Superstars 🙁
That’s quite a big one. I have had the privilege to make some lethal mistakes at one of my previous workplaces that could have ensured my immediate departure from the company, but they were overlooked because I was a blue-eyed one and was delivering results as per my management’s “so-called” expectations and probably everyone around was also happy with me. But that too didn’t last forever.
Yet, at the same time, I’ve also seen cases when the bosses were found just fishing for employees’ mistakes to happen so they could say goodbye to them. The key is to be diligent and cautious all the time, especially when are are not performing as per expectations because even the slightest issue can get us into trouble.
5. Gaining Experience vs. Getting Rusty
We must always remember that there’s a fine line between gaining experience and getting rusty in our careers. Let’s know when to draw that line. Otherwise, we will be left behind. Sometimes we think that we have 10+ years of experience in our existing job role, how about taking a chance to attract the competition for a similar or a better role out there?
Well, let’s think again! In those 10 years, what have we done? Didn’t we do pretty much the same things over and over again, working with almost the same people, and haven’t delivered results that could be quoted as slam dunks? Why would anyone be interested in me as compared to this other guy who has worked in 3 different organisations, small and big, has rolled up his/her sleeves to deliver on the unique roles offered, all while building his/her skill set and led the diverse multi-cultural teams to achieve stellar results. The lesson here: Don’t get rusty. Don’t gather dust on the shelf. Know the difference.
Wrap Up
I’ve seen firsthand that there is a bias against people who job-hop. This issue probably exists in traditional and/or old-fashioned companies where the safety net is an issue. People are either under-qualified or under-skilled. If someone doesn’t stay for three years, it might prevent him/her from getting a dream job because we are thought to lack stickability and loyalty.
If we have been in a role for five years and have not gotten a raise or a promotion, we should probably start to hunt for a job because the company is overlooking our contributions rather than rewarding us for them. One of the comments I get over and over again from unemployed job seekers is to do whatever they can to keep the job they have unless they’re ready to move on and have a new job lined up.
