HR/BUS/GralInt-Climbing Down the Corporate Ladder Without Alarming Your Boss

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Climbing Down the Corporate Ladder Without Alarming Your Boss

The Workologist

By ROB WALKER JULY 22, 2016


Send your workplace conundrums to workologist@nytimes.com, including your name and contact information (even if you want it withheld for publication). The Workologist is a guy with well-intentioned opinions, not a professional career adviser. Letters may be edited.


I’ve had a successful career in banking and financial services. Now, however, I want to downsize my role and responsibilities. How do I sell my skills and talents while seeking a more junior role than my career history suggests? I am not looking for part-time work. But, for example, I’d like to be part of a team, rather the leader. JOHN, HOUSTON
This question may seem surprising, given that we are more or less conditioned to believe that work is all about moving up the ladder — or at the very least, never slipping down it. But Jenny Blake has heard stories like this before. She is an author and a career coach who specializes in career shifts, which is the subject of her forthcoming book, “Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One.” (Ms. Blake was a manager at Google before starting her own business. “When I looked ahead to my trajectory, to climb the ranks of management, I realized, ‘I don’t want that at all,’” she said.)
But it is possible that any given boss may take a more traditional view and interpret any attempt by you to “downsize” your responsibilities as an announcement that you’re ready to start coasting toward retirement. So it’s important to frame this carefully.

Start by seeking out others in your company (and in your field) who have made a similar transition, Ms. Blake suggests, and find out how they managed it. And think of this move in positive terms — “going from a more senior position into a more specialized one,” as she put it. “And really examine what individual contributor role you’d find most exciting.” Take this seriously: You want to think about an outcome that you would genuinely feel good about.
Then, when you actually go to management, don’t be apologetic. “Frame it as: ‘I’ve given this some reflection, and the things that I am truly best at, and where I’ve really had the most impact, are X, Y and Z,” Ms. Blake said. Give specific examples — the “categories of impact, and the results in those areas,” she said. The bottom line is sending the message that this isn’t about kicking back; it’s about doing what most excites you, and thus what should excite your employer, in this new, more focused role.
It may also be worth using essentially the same process to explore opportunities elsewhere. (The Workologist is, in general, always a fan of remaining open to opportunities elsewhere.) But you may discover that your current employer is your best bet. Sometimes, Ms. Blake said, it’s actually a relief to management that not everyone is angling for the same outcome; it can be extremely valuable when a skilled employee “moves to a different track” that can help the company in new ways.
Quality Over Quantity in a Job Hunt
Your recent advice to a reader who asked about “résumé optimization” was spot on, but I suspect there is a deeper problem: Applying online to job postings is a terribly inefficient way to look for a job. I have read that 70 percent of job openings are filled by referrals, or by candidates already known to the company — and I suspect the number may be higher. I publishguides and run workshops on career matters, and I always stress the importance of networking as the best strategy for finding work. In fact, I ask job seekers to make me a promise: For every three hours you spend searching and applying online, spend seven hours networking. It pays off. DOUG KALISH, PALO ALTO, CALIF.
I’m happy to receive this comment (and a few others from readers who made related points), because it gives me a reason to expand on something I only had room to hint at in that column. All the experts I talked to cautioned against going overboard with online application processes: While applying for a zillion jobs feels productive, it’s often more effective to take more care in pursuing a smaller number of more thoughtfully targeted positions.
More specifically, one of those sources made a related point that didn’t respond directly to that reader’s specific query, but that I strongly agree with. Jane Horowitz, a career coach and founder of More Than a Résumé, in Denver, says she tells her clients, often young people just entering the job market, that even when you submit a résumé online to a company you really want to work for, that’s only the first step. The second is to find someone you know who can help get that résumé in front of a human being. “Try to find another way into the company,” Ms. Horowitz says. “You have to.”
In other words: Network, person-to-person. This is exactly why the Workologist believes the job search should be a permanent activity, at least on some low-key level. Today’s casual acquaintance could be tomorrow’s crucial link to a new and better gig.
As far as I can determine, that statistic about 70 percent of openings being filled via referrals factors in internal job searches that are never actually listed in public, and is thus a guess, at best. But a 2014 study by researchers from the Federal Reserve and M.I.T., scrutinizing data from one financial services firm, found that 30 to 50 percent of hires came by way of referrals — even though these made up a slender proportion of applicants, particularly compared with the volume of online applicants.
So, yes, your résumé should be “optimized” for applicant-tracking systems. But don’t spend all your energy on that. Taking time to arrange one informational interview that really cements a productive contact who will remember you and your skills, Ms. Horowitz suggested, might well prove to be more supportive.