What to do when you hit a career plateau (and want to level up quickly)
Let me give it to you straight:
How well you do in your career has very little to do with how good you are doing what you do.
It also has little to do your education, experience and titles.
To be more precise: your professional background will only contribute about 10% to your overall success.
And this is what gets most people stuck- they focus on getting more credentials, earning their stripes by having xx years of experience and stay in the same role or company for longer.
So what does it come down to then?
Glad you asked because this blog covers the exact 3 aspects you need to work on if you want to progress in your career!
Highly likely you’ve graduated from Uni, progressed in your career, worked your way up, ticked all the boxes along the way and now you’ve been there for a while … and no matter how hard you work, how many projects you take on, how many more qualifications you acquire … you don’t seem to get anywhere?
Well – let me tell you: You’re definitely not the only one.
I’ve certainly been there, done that, got my T-shirt and realised when I changed career and got into recruitment that I wasn’t the first (and certainly won’t be the last one) who’s experienced a plateau.
So the question is – how to overcome it?
It goes beyond the traditional thinking of ‘going back to Uni, getting the MBA, earning my stripes and having more experience’ in what I’m doing already…
This is what most people focus on, get stuck and wonder why.
From what I’ve experienced and also learnt from others, it comes down to 3 aspects.
A lack or mismatch of your professional experiences and education
Lack of a strong professional network
Poor personal presentation
I’ve worked with the smartest people in their field and have seen them over and over, missing out on one promotion and pay rise after the next; they often didn’t even the opportunity to even interview for the role.
They had the degrees.
They got some great wins on the board.
They even got accolades etc.
And still- nada
So why is that?
You may have heard of the impact of PIE on your career success?
In 1996, Harvey Coleman explored that 3 key elements that contribute to people progressing in their careers. He explains these 3 elements as:
Performance -
which comes back your professional background, how good you’re in your job and how good the results are of what you do.
Image -
which is how other people see you and how strong your Personal Brand is, internally and external
Exposure -
Who you know and more importantly – who knows of you.
He discovered that your performance aka your professional background only contributes to about 10% of your career progression.
Your image – aka your personal brand, how others perceive you counts for about 30% and a whopping 60% is linked to exposure – aka your network.
Now that we know that, let’s discuss how you can maximise all 3 elements and can progress in your career:
Performance - 10%
Yes, you heard that right … just 10%. This might sound very low but I’m sure you’ve experienced a situation where several people going for promotion or a role.
They have all been invited because they tick the boxes when it comes to their professional background. So you see – meeting the basic criteria for a role is just a door opener but by far not a deal closer.
This brings us onto the other 90%.
30% comes down your image.
What has been their perception of you?
And that goes way back before you even met you at the interview.
People google people and every interaction contributes to making up our mind about someone else.
- It’s your CV – has it made an impact and stood out?
- How well does your social media presence tell and sell your and your point of difference?
- What’s the perception when you entered the room?
- How did you interact with everyone?
- Would they trust you to be able to take the next step?
All those elements contribute to your image – so the question is:
- Why you?
- What makes you different to everyone else?
- What image do you portray?
- What would others say about you?
- How easy is it for others to describe what you do and introduce you to others?
Don’t forget- if you confuse, you lose so do yourself a favour and do an audit of your
- Social media presence, in particular your LinkedIn profile
- Your marketing material aka your CV, your clothes and everything that’s more external
- Current network and ask them for feedback what words they associate with you
Now let’s talk about the final piece to the pie – the gigantic
60% of career progression is based upon the exposure.
It’s the biggest part because your personal brand image only carries weight if others know about it.
- So who knows you and who’s seen you in action?
- When your name is dropped, what do people think of?
- Has your name been mentioned before?
- Has anyone already vouched for you, internally or externally? What does you LinkedIn recommendations say?
We know that we buy from people we know like and trust and nowadays with social media and digital platforms, we can get to know people long before we meet them in person.
This is also why internal candidates usually get promotions before external talents are considered, especially if they got some sort of endorsements from others already.
One big thing that I’ve realised over and over is that there is a massive difference between females and males.
Guys are naturally better with networking whereas females often shy away from getting exposure.
It comes down 2 things:
Women often attribute their success to external factors. Men will tend to attribute their success to their own actions, whereas women will ascribe success to their team or to good old luck. This detracts from their value.
Guys usually say yes before females do and often overestimate their abilities. They’d go for a role when they tick 3 out of 10 boxes whereas most women would say they only ticked 9 out of 10 boxes and wouldn’t be qualified enough so they don’t even put their head in the ring…
In many cases, women are more qualified but don’t want to talk about their achievements and think that others will realise their qualities when they just work hard.
But let me tell you- that’s not the case.
Doing excellent work isn’t enough anymore when no one knows about it.
So sharing what we’re working on, updating people on the team on progress and simply speaking about your goals is key
Now what’s important to mentioned here is that all three pieces of the PIE, their importance to your career does shift over time.
When you start out in your career, it’s probably 90% performance.
Because without foundation, you can’t build on anything.
There’s got to be something there to create an image around your Brand which is the intersection of your credible credentials, your characteristics and your competencies.
We have an entire episode on how you can identify your sweet spot – epi 8 gives you the full roadmap to clarify each stage. Read the full blog here
But as you progress in your career, it’s important to focus on the 2 aspects.
You need to develop your soft skills by being thoughtful in the types of experiences you exposure yourself to build your point of differentiation that will create your image.
Once you’ve created those points of differentiation and are confident with who you’re, how you want to be perceived as and what you want to achieve, it’s key to identify who are the people who can help you get there and build a supportive network around you.
That could be sponsors within the company, mentors who are where you want to be or authorities in your field you can continue to learn from.
Some ways to get more visible are:
- Volunteer for projects (also when it’s outside your job description and/or your normal work hours)
- Speak up in meetings (not for the sake of it but to add value. You want to do some research prior and come prepared as you don’t want it to backfire and just add hot air)
- Grow your network – inside and outside your organisation. You can do it by organising events, set up charity activities or create your own communities through MeetUps, podcasts, blogs & Co.
To bring it to a close, I want to refer back to Ronsley Vaz’s who was a recent guest speaker at one of our monthly expert panel discussion and he said:
You can be the best artist with the greatest painting on the wall, but if no one knows it exists, what’s the point it exists?
So
- clarify your point of difference
- communicate what sets you apart and also why it matters and
- commercialise your Personal Brand
Now if you want to dig deeper in this topic and learn what it takes to create a career on your terms, be more agile with transitioning from one industry or profession into another (and let’s be honest- this is what the FoW is all about), then I’ve got good news for you:
You can join the wait list for the agile career course which is currently in the final stages of redeveloping and relaunching. And we will open the doors very soon and if you’re one of the founding members, you get access to special bonuses and all the good stuff.
And now I want to hear from you!
Are you stuck in the middle and don’t know how to get out?
Send me a DM or a voice message on LinkedIn or Instagram.