Dawn Graham
Appearances
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
The biggest thing to ask yourself is what am I willing to sacrifice to do this? And that's often not the first question people ask themselves. But when you do, you start to get real. It could be temporary, but it could be forever. So I think that's the first question. What am I willing to give up? What are my non-negotiables?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
Because those are going to be some of the things that either get in your way or will prevent you from succeeding.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
Those are two of the big ones that often people don't want to give up. It might be that if you're switching careers, you're now reporting to somebody who has a lot less experience than you. It might be that you've built a career where you have great autonomy because you're the boss or you have built great relationships and now you don't. Now you have to adhere to a schedule.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
Maybe that you've built a remote career. Now you have to go in the office. It may be that you have to travel more, that you have to pay for certifications, that you have to start at the bottom. Money is most people can relate to, but a lot of these other things come down to ego. It's a real thing, right?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
Can you tolerate this when you've become successful in a career, when you've become the boss, when you've become somebody who's respected and has built a reputation? Can you tolerate making mistakes and kind of feeling insecure and feeling like you're not the most experienced in the room? And most people say yes, yes, yes, until they get to that point.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
And then they think, okay, this isn't as pleasant as I thought.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
What I would say about school is that should never be your first step. Unless you're going into a highly regulated field, like becoming a nurse, where those things are going to be a make or break it, you're still going to have a hard job search at the end of your degree.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
If you think that's the easy first step because it feels structured, and I know people hate ambiguity, so it does feel like an easy first step, that's a lot of time, money, and resources to invest in something when you still have that difficult job search on the tail end. The human brain is wired for the lowest hanging fruit. And unfortunately, in a switch, often that's not what's required.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
What's required is shadowing people who are doing the work, reaching out to strangers who you don't know and building relationships with them. uncovering what's beneath the surface and all of the things that you probably don't even have a clue about regarding this career and then trying them on to see if they fit.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
So it's a hugely ambiguous self-experiment, I would call it, if you're looking to switch careers. Of course, unless you know somebody who's doing that job currently who you're very close to, But even then, I would say branch out and talk to more people because chances are that there's a lot more than that one person's experience.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
So you really need to be comfortable with ambiguity and you really need to be comfortable with self-direction. Every day you'll uncover something new that you now need to explore. So if you enjoy that, or at least you can tolerate that, then I think you would be a good candidate for a switch.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
I think some of the same rules apply. You have some general ideas and you start to explore them. You start to have conversations. And through those conversations, you start to pivot. And Hermione Ibarra, who's done a lot of work in this area, talks about this multi-step process where you create experiments, you build connections, and then you evaluate.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
So you continuously go through that iteration, almost like design thinking, if you will, you come to the career that you ultimately want to pursue as you keep going through these iterations. It's not necessarily quick. A lot of people don't like that either, that they want to know and they want to just dive in.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
But it can be a lot of trying things on for size, maybe testing it out in terms of doing some volunteer work, maybe testing it out in terms of doing some projects. Because again, what you read on paper is often very different than what's applied in the actual environment.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
I would say be bold. Not something that a lot of people love to do because our human mind loves to rationalize. Reasons why we shouldn't be bold. I'm an introvert by nature. This is where you have to practice that 15 seconds of courage because you really, really do need to have those conversations and be willing to do the hard work.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
So a lot of people want to do the first thing, which is apply online. But if you think about how jobs are sourced, if you had to hire somebody, what's the first thing you would do, Sean?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
Exactly. That's what hiring managers do. They look in their network. They look within the company. They look at maybe people who've worked for the company in the past By the time it gets to the posting, the public posting, think about all the people who could have taken that job who haven't. Why haven't they? That's a great question.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
The reality is that if you apply online, absolutely use LinkedIn, use social media, find the hiring manager, find someone in that department. It's not as hard as it sounds and reach out to them on LinkedIn. 100% every time because that is the only way you're going to get noticed. You already mentioned networking, but be strategic about it. Start to build relationships with people in that company.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
It doesn't matter if it's the person in the mailroom or the person in the boardroom. Start to build as many relationships. Become a known entity. And this comes back to really focusing on where you want to be. You obviously can't use this strategy in 300 companies. So having a clear plan A, as I call it, is going to make this even more effective.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
First and foremost, you have to know what's coming because when you expect it, the blow tends to be not as hard hitting. Expect that this is going to be tough, that it's going to feel uncomfortable, and that uncomfortable is part of the process. Another thing to do is to avoid comparing yourself at all costs.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
Comparisons is the devil in this process because inevitably what you see online, what you're probably looking at and reaching out to people who are successful, you're not yet successful. So be careful about starting to compare your start to somebody else's triumphs out there. That's another thing you can do. And next, talk to people who've done it.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
You may be surprised, but I will tell you, everyone out there who has a LinkedIn profile or a bio that looks like it is all neat and tidy and planned out, they're not. We put it online that way because we wanted to look that way, right? So you're seeing somebody's career in its ideal form. So be careful about making assumptions like that because it'll only make you feel worse.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
This is the ultimate question. And I think the general career advice out there is keep the job you have until you have the one you want. I do think that is good advice in this market because it is increasingly been harder over the past year for people who are not switching careers to find internal roles, nevermind people who are making big career switches.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
So unless you have a stellar network or your uncle is the CEO of the company that you want to work for, it's probably a good idea to do your exploration. And I would even venture to say, start a side gig. Start your own consulting business around this. Start to do projects, even if you do them for free. I know people are thinking, I don't have time. Who has time for that?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
But you really want to lay the groundwork as much as you can for the next role you're doing and get the requisite skills, requisite resume builder type certifications before you actually need it. Because there's a difference when you're interviewing, when you're networking, when you need a job versus when you want a job. And it is very, very perceptible to people.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
Unfortunately, you're going to find a lot of your network contacts, if they know you are needing a job, are going to back off. And that's sad because it shouldn't be that way. If you can swing it, if you're not in a toxic situation, if you're not in a situation where you've been laid off and you can look while you're in a current organization, that is always going to be helpful.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
I would say this, security comes within ourselves. A lot of us feel like we need to be inside a company and there's a security that comes with that. But we know looking at the last year, I've been laid off twice in my career and a lot of people I know have been laid off and that's a scary, scary thing. But when you know that your career lies within you, The skills you build, you take with you.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
The experience you build, the relationships you build, those are all part of who you are, whether you're attached to a job, attached to a company or not. So what I would say is maintain that confidence, whether you're in a job search now, whether you're going to be in a job search soon, you bring a lot of value to the market. And don't forget that because confidence breeds confidence.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
You have a lot to offer. So when you show up, remember that.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
Thank you. I've enjoyed being here, Sean.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
Thanks, Sean. Happy to be here.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
Sounds basic, but when you start to do it, there's so many factors to consider. One of the biggest ones is taking a look at what you've learned over the last year and how you're building your skill set. And if you're starting to find that you're getting stagnant and you're not growing, then
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
That could be one of the biggest signs because what we know is the world is changing at warp speed and we're all going to need to make career changes. One of the things that's going to make that easier is that we're constantly growing and building our skill set.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
There's a lot of tactical factors if you're in a situation at work that is untenable or your role recently went from being remote to in person and that's not working for your family. There's certainly a lot of those types of reasons. I see people making changes as well. I think you have to make sure that where your career is going is aligned with your values.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
And if being home for dinner is one of the things that's important to you, you can certainly sustain that for a while, but you're going to get burned out pretty quickly if you start to notice that your career has shifted in a way that is misaligned. And then of course, there's the, I'm bored and I want to do something new.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
So this is a great time to look at what you have in your day-to-day job and see if you can maybe shift things around and create the environment that has more of what you want. I always recommend starting there first because you're in the company, you've built relationships, you've probably proven yourself.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
But if that organization or environment doesn't offer you what you want, my recommendation is to start having conversations with people who seem to be doing what you want to do and go from there.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
Both are hard. Looking for a new career can feel a little bit more intimidating because you have to step outside of your comfort zone where you probably feel pretty accomplished and experienced in your current function or industry.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
When you start changing careers, you start to feel a little bit intimidated because a lot of the people around you seem to have more experience or more skills in that area. I would say that if you're looking to make a career switch, that's a great thing.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
Don't shy away because it's a little bit more difficult, but really start introspecting, figure out what you want to do and why you want to do it. And then start to think about what's realistic because a career change will come with certain things that may or may not appeal to you. So you might need to change geographies. You might need to return to get a certification or a degree.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
You might need to take a temporary salary cut. And some of those things might be doable. Others may not. It doesn't mean that a career switch isn't in your future. It just might mean now is not the time and you can start preparing for it a little bit earlier so that when you are ready to do those things, you are set to go.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
The introspection really starts with where's your professional energy? And I like to call it professional energy because I think the word passion is a little bit too intimidating for many of us because it just implies a lot of big life things when sometimes, in fact, our professional energy is a little bit more targeted and focused. Where do you lose time during the day?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
What types of activities really make you feel energized afterwards? For example, when I coach clients, sometimes it's that camaraderie and collaboration around a project where everybody's kind of doing their own piece. For others, they love working up against a deadline and they like that pressure of working with clients who have that 11th hour change and they have to scramble to get it done.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
And other people are really focused on data analytics and finding stories in the numbers. So it's really about where is that professional energy for you and how can you expand it? How can you build on it? How can you add more of it to your day-to-day job? And sometimes you can do that in a very similar job. Other times it might be that you have to
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
to make a pretty big pivot to get more of that into your job. But I say start there and then always make sure that things align with your values. So sometimes making a change. I had a client once who wanted to switch into finance and found that a lot of his evenings were spent having dinner with clients or traveling and that took him away from his family.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
So as much as he loved doing the day-to-day work, it really didn't align with where he was in his life. That said, it doesn't mean it won't in 10 years, but he really had to struggle to resolve that. So don't forget to look at the lifestyle, the environment, and the other factors that are really going to be part of your day to day.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
That's a great point, Sean. A lot of us see the surface. So we see someone's title, we see them in maybe 10% of their job, and we imagine that this is what it's like. But I think one of the biggest things we can do is constantly have conversations with people who seem to be doing interesting work, whether that's inside our company or people you find on social media or LinkedIn.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
Reach out, ask for 20 minutes and say, hey, what you do seems really interesting. I'd love to learn more about it. Can I have 15, 20 minutes of your time just to hear what your day-to-day is like? And a lot of times you'll find out that, wow, this is just as interesting as it looks on the surface. And sometimes you'll learn, wow, that's not at all what I expected it to be.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
And thank goodness I don't have to do that job. I think that's one thing I see a lot of people shying away from. Reach out to people. It doesn't matter they're in a different field. It doesn't matter they're at a different level. Some people won't get back to you, but a lot of people will, especially if you approach them in a thoughtful manner and you're not looking to take up too much time.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
People love to talk about the work they do, and you can learn a lot from somebody who's actually in the field, on the ground, doing that work, much more than you're going to learn on the internet.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
It really depends on your culture. Some companies are great at encouraging and supporting people in moving around, learning different parts of the business and growing in that way. They even have rotational programs or side gigs where you can work with different departments and learn about what they do.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
And then other companies are a little bit more structured and prefer that you stay on the path that you're on. A lot of that comes back to your relationship with your manager who can play a big role in your success and your future. But I don't think we necessarily need permission from anyone to have conversations.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
So if this is something you're thinking about, I think it's absolutely fine to reach out to somebody if you want to do something in marketing or in finance or in the legal department or in HR and just have a conversation, go to coffee, learn more about what they do. And if it seems like This might be something you want to pursue seriously.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
That's when you may need to have that conversation with your manager and talk to them about what those next steps are. But I think to initially get started, we can all be having these conversations. And then when you are ready, if you are in a culture where that's supported, I'm sure there's ways that they will support you throughout that.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
But if you're not, you may find that you may have to go somewhere else in order to do that or in order to be taken seriously in a different role. So a big part of it depends on the environment you're in.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
First, you want to make sure you're not catching your manager off guard because you're going to get a poor reaction if you do that. Set aside time, maybe you have annual reviews or semi-annual reviews and get prepared to have the conversation during that time because everybody's coming to that meeting with the expectation that you're gonna be talking about growth and where you wanna go.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
The other thing I would say is don't make it an ultimatum and don't make it a, this has to happen in the next two weeks or I'm leaving because again, most of those types of switches internally can't happen within that short period of time.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
If you come to your manager with a well-thought-out plan to say, hey, I'd like to make this transition over the next six months, here's what I'm thinking we can do to make that smooth. Maybe there's somebody on your team who's ready for the next level that you can start to train. Maybe there's an opportunity to bring an intern in to start doing some of your work so you can transition.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
putting yourself in the manager's position and getting into their mind and saying, what's going to be their concern? Their concern is they're losing a great resource. Their concern is how am I going to backfill this? And so if you can start to really think about how you can partner to solve those, you're probably going to get a lot more support.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
You have to know what you want, why you want it, and build ambassadors. And what ambassadors are and how it goes beyond networking is people who know you and want to help you. They are your cheerleaders. Do they know what you want to do? Are they aware that you are looking for something new? And are they aware specifically?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
And I would challenge people to say that the people closest in your life, if you ask them, hey, in a sentence or two, tell me what I do in my job. And I'm not talking about, oh, you work in technology or, You do something at Disney. I'm talking about what do I specifically do? Most people who know you well are your cheerleaders and want to help you have no idea what your job is.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
So I think that's the best place to start. If you can give them a very layman's terms of the type of work you do and give them an assignment saying, if you see this, if you hear of anything like this, bring it back to me. That's one of the biggest things we can all do is make sure the people closest to us are out there being our ambassadors.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
Whether you're in a job search now, whether you're going to be in a job search soon, you bring a lot of value to the market. And don't forget that because confidence breeds confidence. You have a lot to offer, so when you show up, remember that.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
It's a great question. It's coming up a lot these days. And I think one of the things you need to do is pinpoint the source. What is it that is causing that? And sometimes it's the job and sometimes it's something outside the job. You need to be really honest with yourself around what is it that's really causing this.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
The other thing is that no job is perfect and no job is all bad, although there might be a few that people might contest on that point. But what is it that initially drew you to the job? Is some of that still here? Is it just that you've gotten bored in it? The other thing I would say is focus on the things that are going great and allow you to do the things you want to do.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Is It Time to Leave Your Job? Tips for Smart Moves and Strategic Growth
Hey, my job's remote, which allows me to go to Pilates, allows me to have dinner with my family. It allows me to not have to spend two hours commuting. Tap into those things. But if you really find that you struggle, it may be time to find something new.