What comes to your mind when I say “right place, right time?” Is it stumbling out of a bar and getting arrested for drunk and disorderly only to fall in love with your soulmate probation officer? Or maybe it is being the 1,000th customer and getting a years’ supply of milk bones at the pet store. Still, right place, right time could be walking off of rope bridge over a deep gorge right before it collapses behind you.
Ok, so maybe those are oddly specific, but they all involve some sort of timing and elements that are within and outside of your control. Basically, they involve luck. Let’s take it further.
This time, you go to a crocheting class to meet people as crocheting is a passion of yours. You meet your soulmate and click instantly because of your shared passion. Spoiler alert: you will have more crocheted clothing items than you ever needed for the rest of your life and your cat will be in heaven with all of the yarn to play with.
Now, there was some luck involved here, to be sure, but your odds were improved greatly because of the intention to meet and connect with others.
Now, let’s tie this into job searching. Not all jobs are for all people, nor are all companies and neither are job situations. What is a job situation, you ask? A job situation is the circumstances that arose that allowed for the job position to come open. I am going to go through several of these situations and the advantages and disadvantages to consider for each.
A New Job that is Created: This can be very exciting if your personality is one that can work in a situation without a lot of structure. If a job is created out of thin air (poof!), it is most likely because the company is growing. In business, they say as a company you are either growing or dying. Having been in both situations I can assure you that growing is much more fun. Dealing with bankruptcy attorneys and vendors who know they won’t be paid….not so much.
If the new position is for a non-profit or government agency, it is likely that new funding was created or legislation may have crafted this new position. In any case, there will not be any set procedures. There will be an idea of the duties and responsibilities, but most likely in 6 months you will be doing a lot of stuff that no one ever anticipated. The hours could be longer upfront.
Elvis has left the building: The person in the position before you has departed, either voluntarily, or involuntarily. Let’s address both:
1) Just Say Julie! If your predecessor left on their own terms / good terms then you may have a harder time fitting in to the overall culture of the organization. People will expect you to do things the same way Julie did before she left to pursue her dream of being a Buffet Sneeze-Guard Designer (bad career choice given the pandemic). Julie had strengths that you didn’t have and vice-versa. It will be hard for you to make changes that could improve efficiency and / or output. This may take patience and diplomacy in your part. However, if you also crave an environment of clocking in / clocking out with structure, this is a great situation for you!
2) Replacing Beavis: In this case you are going to come in with more flexibility as your predecessor, Beavis was let go for performance-related (or lack thereof) issues. You may have a large degree of structure to work with depending on the organization or there may decide to shit-can the whole thing and let you build the position from the ground up. This can be advantageous or not depending on your personality type and what you consider to be your ideal situation. That is why it is very important to ask lots of questions in the interview regarding expectations and structure to get an idea of how much autonomy you may have in this position.
Promotion: Some hires can be made from within the same organization. The advantages are clear, certainly, however promotions are not always good things. The Peter Principle comes into play here. The Peter Principle is that people will rise to their “level of incompetence.” Basically Person A is hired as a clerk, works their way up to store manager, does a bang up job and then is promoted to Human Resources Manager. Person A sucks at Human Resource Management and has zero passion or knowledge in these areas. The Company ends up with multiple lawsuits for labor violations, hostile work environment and discrimination. Person A is given the boot and finds a new job at a different store as a Store Manager, never to work in Corporate again.
Promotions can be newly created positions, or replacement positions that follow much of the logic above. Once you are offered a promotion, don’t jump on it right away. Take 24 hours to think it over and ask lots and lots of questions, like you are interviewing for a new job (hint: you are!).
Demotion: Find a new job somewhere else.