One of my clients recently called me with a dilemma: She was interviewing at a fast-growing e-commerce company and was interviewed by both the Chief Marketing Officer, who was responsible for corporate-wide marketing initiatives, as well as by the GM of a business unit for specific e-commerce marketing initiatives that would improve their business size and put them on the competitive map.
Each position was a director-level opportunity for my client and represented a major promotion to her. My client was enamored of working in the corporate environment directly for the CMO. This meant much visibility, access to corporate officers, and corporate-wide marketing initiatives. Working for the GM of one BU meant not as much glamor and meant more sweat. So, my client came to me excited about the possibility and wondering which of the two jobs would be the right career move for her. She had almost decided that working for the CMO would be her preferred choice.
During our meeting we talked about what her long-term career aspirations were, what she really enjoyed doing, and how she might see her own professional growth in each of the two jobs that were available to her. Even in our discussion it was clear that during the interview process she had subjected herself to be interviewed, but had forgotten to interview the two potential bosses; she had not asked some critical questions of either one to assess what would be the best career move for her.
So, I suggested to her that she contact each hiring manager in that company and tell them that she was facing a tough choice selecting between the two. Rather than making this her issue, we turned around and presented this need for exploring further by asking them that she wanted to learn more about where she could create the greatest value for the company, both short-term and long. This made it easier for her to set up the two interviews on her terms. During the coaching session I asked her to explore the following:
1. Vision that each boss held for growing their business and the incumbent’s role in making that vision a reality.
2. How would the incumbent’s performance be measured and what guidance she would receive from her boss to make her role a success?
3. What other opportunities can be made available for her professional growth?
4. How much autonomy she would have and how much innovation would she be allowed, to change the status quo?
5. How would she be rewarded?
Once she had her script ready for her new rounds of interviews, it was clear that the outcome of this process would decide her choice. Interestingly, the CMO did not have specific answers to most of the questions. His answeres were broad, general, and evasive. The BU’s GM, on the other hand was very specific about his objectives, and all the other details my client wanted to know. What also came out from this exploration was that the CMO did not really understand the e-commerce space as well as my client did and he was hoping to learn much from my client during her engagement with him about the state-of-the-art of e-commerce marketing and analytics.
When my client came back with this discovery, she had a very different perspective about the job and what she would get from each job. It was clear that even though working for the CMO would have glammed-up her résumé, it would be much more powerful if she succeeded in shepherding the BU initiatives that the GM had in mind. Once we knew the real opportunity, I suggested to my client that she get back to both of them and suggest that she would work with the BU GM on his initiatives first, and then team-up with the CMO to spread that success to other BUs, which the CMO found not only reasonable, but exciting.
During the second exploration each potential boss came to realize that by asking the questions that my client had posed to them, she had held a mirror in front of each. Their own assessment of how they would work with her decided the final outcome of the process and my client did not have to make a choice that might have alienated the other manager.
So, what is the lesson here? During a typical selection process we often surrender our own ability to choose to those in “power,” thinking that they should know better and they have our best interest in mind. As you can see from this episode, you must always take charge of navigating through your own career.
Good luck!