My (Real) Tips for Navigating a Professional Career
Over the last three weeks, I gave you a full deep dive into my IT career history. I talked about my first job, my current job, and everything in between! I was as honest and thorough as I could be (probably more honest and thorough than I should have been), but now I’m going to look a little bit deeper and provide you with a few lessons that I’ve learned from navigating my IT career and the professional space. I figure that if I’ve devoted this much time to a career, I might as well try my best to help others who are looking into the same thing.
Know What You Want
This is something that took me a long time to figure out. It led to me accepting jobs that just weren’t right for me and also resulted in not asking the right questions in my interviews. When you know what you want, it allows you to be more selective in your job search and lets the people who are interviewing you know that you aren’t going to be too easy to take advantage of.
The best way to know what you want is to first know what you’re worth. There are all sorts of ways to go about determining this. The first and easiest approach is to just look on a website like Glassdoor for the median salary for the position you’re seeking. This is the average salary, and you should be able to find both the national and local averages. Now look at your own resume and ask yourself (honestly) if it’s the sort of resume that reflects someone who should receive above or below the average salary for this particular position. This gives you a rough idea of what you should be expecting so that you can know whether or not you’re being lowballed when it comes to salary.
That’s just salary, though—there are other things to know when you are preparing to apply and interview for positions in your field. Benefits, work-life balance, the scope of the position, management styles, and more are all things that should be on your mind. Knowing what you want also allows you to know what to ask in interviews, which is actually my next tip.
Ask Genuine Questions in the Interview
When you perform an interview, most quality interviewers will end the interview with something like “Do you have any questions for us?” and you should never say “No,” unless they somehow answered all of your questions over the course of the interview, which is rare but can happen if it is a more conversational interview and they are upfront about everything without your prompting.
The questions I ask vary by the position I’m applying for, but I do have a few of them that remain consistent because they cover topics that are important to me personally. You don’t have to ask all or any of these, but hopefully, they will at least give you an idea of how you should approach the period of the interview wherein you get to ask questions of the interviewer. Here are some of my favorite questions to ask, right now:
How did your company handle the Covid-19 pandemic when it first hit?
How would you describe your work-life balance?
Are you open to any alternative schedules (4/10s, 3/12s, etc.)?
What is your overtime policy?
What is the balance between your external hiring and internal promotion?
What would an ideal employee look like in this position after three months since being hired?
If I were to assume this role, what would a typical day look like for me?
These are just some sample questions that I ask of just about any company. Even if I think that I already know the answer, it’s good to ask the question anyway and hear it from someone who is directly representing the company. This is especially important because you get to see the person while the question is being answered (unless I guess, it’s a remote interview without video). That allows you to get a better read and, hopefully, determine if some information is being provided inaccurately or if you’re being misled.
I have absolutely turned down jobs because I felt like the interviewer was withholding when answering questions like those above. Especially with the work-life balance question that is specific to the interviewer, it’s pretty hard to lie about that with a straight face.
You Can Walk Out (and You Should)
Unless you’re contracted or have some weird clause in your employment terms, you are not obligated to give any notice to your employer when you leave. Period. Two weeks is a courtesy and not all employers deserve it. In my experience, and from my own employment history that I spilled over the last two weeks, many employers don’t deserve notice. If you are being mistreated in any way or have been disrespected at your job, you don’t have to tell them you’re leaving, especially if you suspect that the mistreatment will only become more unbearable as a result of you giving that notice.
Oh, and if you still aren’t sure about that, sometimes when you give notice, your employer will just “offer” to have you leave sooner rather than later, which is really more of an insistence that if you stick around through to your provided end-date, things aren’t going to go well for you in your remaining days. It’s malicious, but I promise that it happens.
On the flip side, I have given a couple of employers significantly more than two-weeks notice. If I love the employer, love the team, and have been treated with kindness and respect during my employment, I want to do whatever I can to make sure the transition between myself and my replacement is as smooth as possible. I’ve offered to help with interviews, I’ve suggested replacement candidates, and I have asked some past managers what they would like for me to do in my role during my last few weeks or months to make sure that everything is taken care of on my part before I depart.
So, I’m not telling you to walk out on every job you have. I’m telling you that you can walk out on jobs and shouldn’t feel guilty about that if you were mistreated at that position (or if you genuinely feared mistreatment that would result from announcing your upcoming departure). You can, likewise, provide greater than two weeks of notice if you like your employer and/or your team. I’ve provided several months of notice in the past if I knew that I was going to be moving to another location or if I had accepted a position, but my start date was far off.
“But T. L.! Aren’t you worried that a potential employer will read this and decide not to hire you!?” Nope. If someone reads this and thinks “Well, we’re going to mistreat him, so he’ll walk out on us,” then guess what? I don’t want to be hired by those people. If the company is going to treat me with respect and kindness, then they don’t have to worry about an abrupt departure. Heck, if they’re going to be respectful toward me, they can count on a long notice and amiable last few weeks or even months as I work to ensure a smooth transition!
Conclusion
That’s it! Of course, there are tons of other, smaller tips that I can give. Talk about your salary with your coworkers and others in your field, ask your manager about the steps needed to receive a promotion you want in the future, ask for more money if you believe you deserve it, never take your resume off of job-sites, uhh… okay, there’s got to be more, but I should really wrap this up. I hope that the information I gave here and over the last couple of weeks has been helpful!
I appreciate the time you’ve taken to check out this post. If you’d like to support me, the best way to do so right now is to subscribe to my YouTube channel! You can also follow me on social media; I’m @TLBainter on most social media sites, and I’ll have links for all my profiles at the bottom of this post.
Until next time, bye!