“It seems so overwhelming,” Marlene said as she started our career counseling session. “Every year, I go through this cycle of getting more frustrated about my job to the point where I update my resume and start looking at Monster and Indeed. And, then I stop.” When she came in for career counseling, Marlene was a late-forties account executive for a company based in Shoreline, Connecticut. She took the job ten years ago when she was a mom returning to work and felt delighted that she could get any job. She kept the job because it was flexible enough for her to attend important school events and get home early when needed. Most everything else about the job she did not like. She hated some parts of the job. Marlene’s distress came when she reflected on “what happens next?” Thoughts of doing this work into the indefinite future were distressing her.
Marlene discovered as many do that “nothing good happens next” in one’s career unless you take control and embrace the career change process, often in step by step manner. I should note that when “something happens” outside of your control, it most often is not a good thing. Getting called out of the blue with a great job offer is not that likely. Getting called out of the blue to hear that your job has been eliminated has become commonplace.
Marlene was stuck because figuring out what to do next was not easy. She had heard about Career Counseling Connecticut through one of her friends and realized that the first step: e-mailing me was not hard and her next step – scheduling appointment -wasn’t hard either. She adopted the mantra: “one step at a time” as we went through our career change process in a couple of meetings. The process worked for Marlene as she recently sent me a nice Christmas card noting her delight about her current job.