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Making Words Work for You

The robots are coming! What’s your plan?

Look out! The robots are coming! Seriously, they’re coming! And they want your job!

… OK, phew. Your job is safe now from automation. That was a close one.

But look out! Budget cuts and layoffs are coming! Watch out for falling axes! Your job is in danger!

… OK, you dodged that one. Good. You can relax; your job is safe, you have a good thing going, your boss is great, and — what? Your boss just took a new position in Charlotte and your new boss is the guy down the hall who’s had it in for you since day one? 

Panic!

… Or don’t panic, if you have a solid exit plan.

Any of these scenarios can be disastrous, and depending on your career, any of them could happen to you. That’s why it’s vital to have an exit plan in place before you need one.

How to prepare

Your exit plan should include:

  1. Having an updated résumé. It should describe your current job, responsibilities, and recent accomplishments.

  2. Keeping your skills up-to-date. Don’t get complacent because your job only requires you to know version 5 of the software. If version 6 is out, you’d better learn version 6, and mark your calendar for the release of version 7.

  3. Maintaining contact with your network. You know other people in your field who work for different companies; check in with them every now and then, connect with them on LinkedIn, have lunch to trade news from other corners of the industry. Know the environment, get their take on which way the winds are blowing, and start thinking about which direction you should set sail if the waters get choppy.

You never know when you will need your exit plan; it may sit in the back of your mind for years until you retire according to your own schedule. If so, mazel tov!

But if something unexpected does happen to throw you off course, an exit plan will let you start your new career path from a place of preparedness and control instead of panic and desperation. And that’s the best way to leave one job: with a firm focus on the next one.

Not sure what to leave off your résumé? Take the Rex Test

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Sometimes harder than deciding what to put into a résumé is deciding what to take out.

You’ve worked hard your whole life, and you're proud of all the skills you’ve mastered that have brought you where you are—and rightfully so. You got your hands dirty while climbing that ladder, and you’re still willing to do the grunt work as needed to support the team. You want that all to be listed on your résumé as part of your success story, but there’s just no room. The résumé would be too long, and your best accomplishments could be lost in a sea of chores.

So how do you decide what to delete?

I call it the Rex Test.

Imagine your boss calls you into his office for a “special assignment” (and because “special assignment” is in quotation marks, you know it’s not going to be good). His nephew, Rex, has no discernible skills, admits to having no ambitions, is not particularly fragrant, never raises his eyelids more than halfway, and was supposed to be here a half hour ago, but got lost in the parking lot.

And he’s just been hired in your department.

Your “special assignment” is to give Rex something to do that he can’t mess up. It has to be simple, it has to be relatively unimportant, and it has to be something easily fixable because even though it’s something he can’t mess up… you know he’ll mess up.

Delegating the easiest jobs

So which of your regular job duties will you train him to do? In other words: What do you do as part of your job that’s so easy, so below-entry-level that you can hand it off to Rex and be relatively confident you haven’t just subjected the company to immediate and irrevocable financial ruin?

That’s the job responsibility you can cut from your résumé.

If it’s a chore is so simple that Rex can do it, it doesn’t deserve a place on your résumé with the higher-order, more challenging responsibilities you take on day after day. But if a prospective employer sees your résumé filled with Rex jobs, she may assume you’re not as valuable to your current employer as you’d like to portray yourself. After all, if you’re doing Rex jobs, your current boss must not have that much faith in, or respect for, your abilities… or worse: Maybe YOU’RE the Rex of your workplace?

You don’t want that.

So if you regularly negotiate multi-million dollar contracts with clients, your résumé doesn’t need to mention that you also use the copy machine. Let Rex do it.

If you devise treatment plans for patients and follow through to ensure they’re executed properly and adjusted as needed, you can let Rex make the coffee; you don’t need that on your résumé like he does.

If you have been operating heavy construction machinery for 20 years, and year after year are recognized by your company for having zero safety violations in your career, let Rex fill the gas tank; you have more valuable skills to put to use.

Giving Rex these jobs frees you up to focus on improving your more important skills, and these are the skills that will sell your résumé when you apply for your next job.

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Greg Marano