Climbing Down the Career Ladder....Voluntarily

[Joywtseo421]

At first glance, you may be thinking that this post is how to avoid something negative….It isn’t! I am talking here about how to climb down the career ladder voluntarily!

Why would anyone do that!?

As usual, I have been inspired by an interaction with one of my customers, who, in my humble opinion, was given some of the worst career advice I have ever heard, more about that later, but let me set the scene.

Imagine a highly experienced Manager, Director, Executive, Consultant…feel free to insert your professional of choice…quite a senior person in terms of career progression, and to a degree, maturity of years. Suffice it to say that this person is awesome at what he or she does, and they have been doing it for such a length of time that when they step back, they realise that it has been 20 or 30 years or more.

After some reflection, this person forms the opinion that – actually…I’m done with this qatar phone number library job! Not ready for retirement or even semi-retirement, but certainly feeling a little battle-weary from years of operating at their level, whether this involves stress, pressure, competition, being away from home too much….whatever.

A Change on the Horizon
Horizon

It could even be that some event has, or is about to surface in a person’s life that demands that priorities need to change and it presents itself as “I just can’t carry on in my current role…and still do justice to my new set of circumstances.”

Alternatively, it could be as simple as what happened to my customer [without shattering the Data Protection Act of course]. This person has recently found themselves in a slight career gap, following what can only be described as a pretty diverse background so far, and this gap is being filled with a spell of temping via an agency. The reasons for this range from ‘keeping the wolf away from the door’, to preventing a gap in the CV.