Know Your Previous Job Patterns

If you are looking for a job, it's more important that you know what your previous patterns are, so that you can make a choice: Do I repeat my previous pattern this time? Without knowing, we tend to repeat the same behaviors. Once we know, we have choices.

One of the best ways I know how to do this is with a career timeline.

Organize Your Information

Take a piece of paper that is sufficiently large for your career. I recommend you take a piece of flipchart paper and turn it so it's landscape. Or tape two pieces of blank paper together. Make sure the paper is sideways, landscape. This image is what a career timeline looks like:

Draw a vertical line down the left side. That's the satisfaction/happiness/feelings line. The magnitude of your feelings help you see your patterns at given times.

Next, draw a horizontal line across the middle of the paper. That's the neutral line. The top of the paper is the most satisfaction you can imagine. The bottom is the least satisfaction you can imagine.

As you chart your career, place each experience as positive/negative, or neutral. I'm not so neutral about anything, which is why you don't see many neutral positions.

Now, starting with your first job, make a career timeline. You might need to add your personal achievements to your timeline. And remember, careers are not linear.

Each of Us Has Non-Linear Careers

I don't know a single person who planned a career and then had their career move linearly upwards. Most people have careers that move up, down, sideways, up, sideways, down, up, and other variations. If you thought your career should always move up, up, up, think again. It's fine to take a step sideways or down. I have. Most people do.

I worry about people who don't show non-linear careers. Too often, they don't realize how their career is going or that they have not admitted they made a Big Mistake Taking That Job. (I have two of those, and they are both the below-the-neutral line feelings.)

Consider these ways to start:

1. Place the major events first with your feelings. Don't bother with the ups and downs until after you place those events. After you have the events, draw the line from the earliest events to the latest, up until the present day.
2. Start at the beginning of your career and add a notation as you draw the continuous line.

If you look through my timeline, you can see I had some very bad “down” events and some significant “up” events. I repeated those patterns until I became a consultant. You might discover you repeat certain patterns that have a lot to do with your “personal” life and not your work.

Many of us unknowingly repeat some behaviors—and we are all unique. My patterns are not your patterns—and neither are your colleagues'.  No one has patterns that are just like yours.

This should take you a while. The first time I drew my career timeline, it took me about an hour. I missed a few things. You don't want to miss anything.

Start with Your First Job

Where do you start? With your first job. When was your first job? When you chose your first job. Why am I being vague? Because I don't know if you considered babysitting or mowing lawns your first job. Do you? Then include it.

I considered my first job the one when I graduated from college, not the factory jobs in high school or the programming job or the operator job in college. Why? Because those jobs were not full time and did not showcase my, ahem, sterling qualities. If your teenage jobs did showcase your sterling qualities, then, please, do include them. Some of us, like me, took a little longer to season. If in doubt, start when you took your first full time job.

If you are a new grad, start with your very first job. Yes, your very first job, whether that was an unpaid babysitting job for your parents when you were 12, or that unpaid internship last year.

So, are you with me now? You have taken the time to chart your career. You have noted the major events and drawn how you felt about those events. Now is the time to mine your career line for its goodies.

Mine Your Career Line

Step back and look at your career line. Look for patterns. What do you see? Do you see some common ups and downs?

Talk with yourself, pair with someone, or use a trusted advisor. I have some common patterns. For example, when I get bored or have no work, I get unhappy and look for a job. When the work is not in my control, I get unhappy and look for a job.

Now, here is where I thought the three questions from Three Interview Questions That Might Not Reveal Anything might be helpful to your career timeline:

• How did you find out about the job? Did you network to find your job? How deeply?
• What did you like about the job before you started? What were your expectations? How closely did your expectations match reality?
• Why did you leave? Was it a culture fit? Was it something different?

You might want to ask some other questions:

• What circumstances provide you the most satisfaction in this job?
• What patterns do you tend to create for yourself?
• How did you feel while doing your career line?
• How do you react to positive events? To negative ones?

Once you answer these questions and any others you choose to add, learn your patterns.

Assess Your Patterns

While your career timeline won't look like mine, it will bear some resemblance.

I have my career timeline annotated with numbers. For example, #3 is when I had nothing to do. I was down because I was bored, but not seriously down.

The time between 12 and 13, I was at a job that was wrong for me and I knew it. That was a long time to be at a job that was wrong.

Because I'm by nature a positive person, I don't spend lots of time below the neutral line, so I would have to explain the line to you. I made this line back in 2006, so it doesn't have the most recent years on it.

Your patterns might help you see what causes your ups and downs. Not every up or down is a job change. It's an up or a down. If you know what causes your ups and downs, you might be able to decide on a new role that's better for you.

A Pattern of Leaving Before Things Could Get Bad

I once saw a career line that looked like this:

This person preemptively left jobs before anything really bad could happen. His expectations were so high that anything could look bad. However, he never grew “enough” (his assessment) to get the next job he wanted.

We discussed this and he had some ideas about moderating his expectations and not leaving companies right away.

If you see a pattern like this, you have choices. While you can repeat this pattern, you might choose to change it.

I learned about this technique in Jerry Weinberg's Becoming a Technical Leader. I incorporated it into Manage Your Job Search (with more details than here.)