Jobhop Jobhop's blog : Forget The Career Ladder And Just Do The Career ZigZag

Many people are still obsessed with climbing the career ladder.

Reaching the top of one's profession can only be admired, but does being successful have to be straight up the imaginary ladder?

Is it time to forget about the career ladder?

As more companies adopt holacracy or try to get rid of the old-fashioned hierarchy system in some way, the roles at the top will lessen, that means career development will look different.

This can only be a good thing. How many times have you heard about the person who worked their way up the ladder to become the manager, they have a great salary but are now unhappy as hell. The problem is they feel obliged to carry out their managerial role because it took them a long time to get promoted; they would let so many people down if they gave up after such a short space of time. So the manager becomes an unhappy manager, employees give the manager a wide berth, the department becomes less productive.

That’s why a career zig-zag is good.

Let’s look at a zig-zag, it can be zig-zagging vertically, or it can be zig-zagging horizontally, either way, is the right way, it can even be joined up and go round in a circle!

When we decide to adopt the career zigzag, we give ourselves permission to try new things, abandon things that don’t make us happy and go back to things for a second, third or even a fourth time.

Zig-zagging left to right

By zig-zagging left to right, right to left, within an organisation you get to gain experience in many departments. This type of zig-zagging makes you a valuable employee, one that can slot in anywhere at the drop of a hat, it’s an agile employee skill. Zig-zagging left to right, or visa versa, can help you find what you excel at, many people don’t know until they’ve had the opportunity to try many different things. It must be awful for people not to know what they excel at because they’ve never had the opportunity to try.

Zig-zagging up and down

What if you get a nice digital media job but then decide you want to go back to college to learn real data, that’s ok. What if you come out of college and get a great research job, have a bit of a burnout and decide to be a holiday rep during the summer, that’s ok too.

Some may see this as erratic, but it’s just career zig-zagging, each zig or zag you do, is experience, more skills, more connections as well as personal development.

Zig-Zagging in a circle

You might start off with a job role at a company, and then zig-zag left to right, right to left, then go off, zig-zag up and down for a while and eventually go back to the company you originally started at. More and more companies realise the importance of allowing their employees to fly free to gain more experience and contacts, but always to leave the door open for them for when they come home. When a company has a great culture, it will always feel like eventually going home.

There aren’t any rules when it come to zig-zagging, you can zig-zag left to right, up then down and then all the way round if you want! When you adopt the zig-zag approach, you’ll never have to climb that ladder only to fall off at the top!

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Julie Bishop Jobhop

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