A friend came to me the other day for some career advice regarding moving to a new job, and I found myself repeating a piece of advice I’ve given some other friends and colleagues before.
I thought I’d share this piece of advice here, maybe it’ll come in handy for someone someday.
The idea is as follows, whenever you’re considering moving to a new job, don’t think about that next job, think about the job after it: consider what the different options you have for your next job will do to enable you to get to the job after it, and then choose.
A person should try and work out a basic outline for his ideal career life, with different points along that line marking the different positions he’ll have to go through to get to his goal.
At every point on that line, when he’s thinking about moving to another point, he should look ahead and see if the point he’s moving to will help build him up for the point after it.
Of course the world doesn’t always throw the best options at us, and that’s why we have to think this way and choose what’s best for our careers, even if it means not moving to a new job, and if that is not an option, then we have to choose the job that can best be an intermediary point along the line, that will give us some of the skills and experience we’ll need in the future.
In short, whenever someone is about to take a step forward in his professional life, he has to try and look ahead as far as possible to know where he wants to get to, and then take the necessary steps to get there.