My work involves solving the career problems of our clients. Perhaps the most common line after our meeting: “I should have come here a long time ago.”
More than a few of Career Counseling Connecticut’s clients have compared me to a career doctor so I’ll go with the metaphor: If you break your arm, you go to the doctor immediately. It makes no sense to stay in pain and not get fixed. If you get a cold – even a bad cold -, you don’t go to the doctor. It will pass. You will get better naturally. People in mismatched careers or bad jobs mistake their situation to be more like a cold than a broken arm. This makes a huge difference. Thinking your career issue will get better on its own is objectively foolish. It won’t. No one will you hand you your next career path. Your job won’t just get better without you doing something.
Terry went to work in his friend’s small business. His job was distinctly operational for a specific type of company. In other words, he developed no marketable skills other than solving problems for a relatively unique business. He didn’t like his job in year 1 (really day 1). He also knew that he was not building a career path. Year 2-4 passed without much difference, other than the company’s fortunes began to go downhill which made his job even worse. Year 5 was pure stress as his friend was losing his mind over the failing business and blaming Terry for some of the problems. Terry came to me only after he lost his job.
As we started going through our process and when we locked on what looks like a great fit for Terry’s career path, he repeated nearly a dozen times: “why did I wait so long?”