Tweet: During job change the one factor that matters is your career momentum. If it is tanking, rebuilding your momentum can help you move forward.

As a career coach I am in the business of helping my clients to grow their careers, be engaged in their pursuits, and to guide them in choosing the right options when they feel that they are at crossroads. With the strong undercurrents of many structural forces in how jobs are getting defined and redefined due to technology, market, and geo-political shifts, professionals are often concerned about how to deal with these shifts and how to keep their careers on track.

One of the common client stereotypes is one who feels stuck in their job and sees no way to get to their next level. Their everyday role also becomes increasingly more routine, sucking any excitement out in their work. When they get into this spiral other things also start going in the wrong direction for them: they start getting poor performance reviews, their colleagues and superiors start giving them busy work and end up taking the spotlight for themselves when their projects succeed. It is at this point when these despaired clients come to me for help in finding themselves a new job that they expect would change their career trajectory and put them on a path where they would again control their career destiny.

The problem with this approach is when you lose momentum in your current role it is difficult to make a meaningful change that will put you on an upward career trajectory, allowing you to build a meaningful recovery plan. The interview and selection process for your next job will inevitably put you in a position of a disadvantage and culminate into another job that will not provide you the career relief you were hoping for. In such situations you must start all over again in a new place re-establishing your credibility and taking a chance that the new job would offer you what you came looking for. Often, this just does not work as you’d expect.

So, what is the best way to get out of job and career funk, where things are spiraling down and you have lost any ability to recover from it? Looking outside as an escape from your plight by finding another job is the wrong thing to go after for the reasons just mentioned. So, what is the Silver Bullet when you are stuck in such a situation?

The single most critical factor in a career where you feel you are in control is your career momentum. What is career momentum? It is your ability to have control in how you get assignments in your work, how you deliver on your assignments, and how they impact your workgroup, department, and your company.

A person with a good career momentum will have their résumé communicate to the recruiter or a hiring manager with a very different energy that one without it. Also, how they present themselves throughout the selection process will make a difference in the outcome of that process because those interviewing them will see that difference. Additionally, when you have this momentum you would be more desirable to your current employer and you may not even have to be in a position to be looking outside for another job in the first place!

So, what must you do to build your career momentum right where you are, despite all the negative forces swirling around you in your current job? Here is the list of “to dos” that has worked for my clients:
1. As you keep doing your “day job” identify what is missing from your work group that if you decide to take it on, will make an impact in your group’s overall work or how it produces that work. For example, if you are Project Manager, identify how many projects are late, miss the target deliverables, and get off-track during the past and find a pattern from these variances. Late project may result from lack of proper tools to manage existing projects or from lack of status visibility to management. In such a case identify ways to bring in some new project management tools and develop visible dashboards so that higher-ups are aware of which projects are on track and which ones are likely to get off track. Approach your boss and propose a solution to this problem and provide a plan that is practicable. Work with them to get it approved and find resources to implement that plan. Once it is in place and working it will transform the way your work group delivers projects.
2. Go outside your work group and talk to other groups that either deliver or receive work from your group. Here, you have two avenues to make a mark: the group that delivers work to you and the group that receives your work. Make a list of improvements that are apparent to people in both these groups and prioritize them. The higher priority must be given to tasks that make your work group look good and your boss a hero. Taking this list to your boss can result in your being assigned to a new task of your design that will change the way your work group comes across to other groups within your ecosystem.
3. Next, move up the food chain and uncover what else your work group could be doing, as you get closer to the customer (or supplier) and identify one or two critical items that your work group could change to make a difference to that final experience.
4. Talk to your boss and understand how the company (or their boss) measures the performance of your department. Find out what one or two factors you can work on that will move the needle on those factors in the right direction for your boss and for your department. Since this is in the interest of what is important to your boss you are likely to get all their support in your carrying out that initiative. Deliver on it and measure the “before” and “after” parameters, so you have the ammunition you need for your next résumé version.
5. Once you have taken this initiative you’ll have built significant career momentum and made yourself visible, not only within your own work group, but with others as well that touch upon yours. Now you have enough material for your résumé to make it more marketable and to get you the right opportunity to put your career in the upward trajectory.

Career momentum is one of those factors most overlooked in how professionals manage their careers, especially when they want to make a change. What helps in deciding whether to make such a change is first to ask yourself the key question: Am I running away from something or am I going after something desirable? If you ARE running away from something, first figure out how to define it (see my last blog: Name it to Tame it), conquer it right where you are, and then decide if you should still make a change. When you use this mindset, change will attract you, rather than your chasing an elusive change. If you follow this path you can recover your lost career momentum and take charge of your career in more ways than one; you’ll have conquered yourself in the process! If you follow this path you can recover your lost career momentum and take charge of your career in more ways than one!

Good luck!