Your Career Ladder- Straight isn’t Always Better

What if you took a deep, hard look into yourself and decided that your chosen career path isn’t what you want? Most would assume your discontent stemmed from an unsuccessful achievement of one’s career goals. Simply put, you probably didn’t rise that ladder fast enough.  

But what if your ladder wasn’t straight up and down? More and more organizations are encouraging, supporting, and financing professional training programs because they have learned the hard way – By providing employees with opportunities for career development and growth, organizations can improve employee retention, increase job satisfaction, and enhance overall productivity.  

Entry-level specialist to junior associate to individual contributor to mid-level manager to senior manager to finally executive; But where are the deviations? Where are the tangents life often takes us on? The new city, the new baby, the family crisis, the health scare, and even the job failures? We are conditioned to believe that the successful professional will move up that career ladder with a straight and consistent motion. Oddly enough, organizations learned this before the employees did.   

Progressive organizations discovered a long time ago if you want to keep your turnover rates low and cultivate good talent, the only way to do that is to invest in the development of employees. Allow them to grow away from their existing roles, take on new challenges, and discover new skills they would never have uncovered if they had stayed on the path.   

So often, that career ladder is squiggled with twists and turns, and where you end up might be a completely different place than where you thought you’d be, and the path to get there isn’t at all what you anticipated. And while this all may seem unsettling, with a good solid training foundation, the future may be more in focus than you thought.