PARTNER JOHN BARRETT SHARES EXPERT INSIGHT WITH CIO.COM FOR IT PROFESSIONALS
IT lifers who see promotions and bleeding-edge projects handed to their colleagues may end up telling themselves it’s just a fluke, when in fact, their career path is stalling. And while it pays to fight for good opportunities rather than take flight from a problem, being in denial about your career can hurt your chance to make a correction.
Letting skills go stale, grinding it out in an unrewarding role and sticking around for the money are all career rut warning signs made worse by denying what may be obvious to those around you.
If you feel like you’re on autopilot, it may be time to pull your career out of a tailspin.
Excerpts from John Barrett in CIO.com:
John Barrett, partner with executive search firm ON Partners, points out the much-discussed tech skills gap of open positions and the small pool of people qualified to fill them. Yet this imbalance works in your favor only if you’re in a position to take advantage of it.
“Most IT workers should be expanding or changing their roles or responsibilities every three years or so,” Barrett says. “Staying in the same job or working on the same projects for much longer than that and you risk becoming obsolete before you know what’s happened. This is especially true as employees get older, when it’s easier to become complacent, pigeonholed and stuck in a rut. This is when employees need to step up and be more persistent about seeking new job challenges.”
