5 People You Can Trust to Help Your Executive Career Change

As you consider your executive career transition, you’re going to find that there are lots of resources available to move it forward. How do you know whom you can trust throughout this process? How do you know who has your best interests at heart? Read on to learn how to identify those who can help you most effectively.

1. Friends and Family

You may consider asking your spouse, your friend, or even your parent for advice about your executive career transition. Generally, these individuals in your close circle of trust will have your best interests at heart, but they tend to be among the least objective about what will work for you. Certainly they will know you well and have a good sense of what your strengths and salient characteristics are, but their own self-interest or personal interest in your well-being might interfere with your ability to seek out and obtain a position that satisfies all of your professional requirements.

2. Your Coworkers or Executive Manager

Among those who might offer you a solid career advice are your professional peers or executive leader. However, do know that as much as they have your best interests in mind, they also have agendas. They might be competitive with you or they might ask you to take on more than your fair share. Certainly, as you work your way up through the executive tier in a company, you need to pay attention to the needs and wishes and wants of your colleagues and superiors, but they might not provide the best advice for you if they do not understand your specific aspirations, particularly if they fall outside of your current company.

3. A Mentor

You are certainly among the privileged if you can find and secure a mentor who can stand apart from you and provide you with rock-solid career advice. Finding a mentor can be challenging, but it can be extraordinarily rewarding as well if the mentor truly has a vested interest in your success. The best way to find a mentor, according to leading career experts, is to identify the best-in-class for your industry or role, but not somebody in whose company you wish to work. That in and of itself presents a particular challenge, as you will need to do some serious research to identify that person and then pitch your wish to be his or her protégé. Nevertheless, a good mentor who fulfills the role successfully is an incomparable asset to your career advancement, as he or she can give you an insider’s view to an industry or role while remaining completely objective.

4. A Recruiter

If you know a recruiter from having worked with him or her to fill roles in your organization, you might find this person is a tremendous asset to your own executive career transition. The recruiter might be seeking someone just like you, or that person might know somebody who is. To that end, the ability to create a powerful recruiter network can help you advance your own career transition. The pitfalls of working with the recruiter however, are several. First, you have to trust that the recruiter will keep your aspirations and drive to leave a particular company under wraps. Also, know that the value of this relationship flows according to the money. The recruiter doesn’t work for you if you are a job seeker. In fact, the recruiter works for the individual or company who is paying him or her, leaving candidates such as you in the category of “talent” rather than “particular person I want to help.” Thus, you can trust the recruiter to recommend you for positions for which you are eminently qualified and write for, but apart from that, do not expect much in the way of hands-on treatment from a recruiter who has perhaps dozens of roles to fill and hundreds of candidates to review daily.

5. An Executive Career Coach and Executive Resume Writer

A career coach is a professional dedicated to the career transition success of others. This career coach works directly for the executive and delivers world-class advice, coaching, and sometimes explicit consultation to individuals requiring a partner in the executive career transition process. Often, the career coach and resume writer has credentials from national or international career management organizations that validate his or her training in the field, and he or she also might have won some major global awards in the field. Executive career coaches and executive resume writers report on the exponential success their clients achieve with the type of support they offer, but you need to decide if, as an executive on the cusp of career transition, you are ready to put in the work required to make your own career announcement a successful one. You are welcome to contact me if you would like to know more about the type of work required to make an executive career transition into a successful endeavor. Primarily, it involves a willingness to reach out to new people, except a great deal of direction, and a drive to be the best in your position and your field. Are you ready to make that choice?