You’ve gotten a great job! Now What?

Congratulations! The job search was a success. Now you can relax, decompress, maybe throw a party, and then go to work and do your job.

And in less than three years you’ll be back out on the street, looking for another job!

This is the American Way of career management:

Relief settles in moments after you accept the new position. Turning your career over to your new employer, you focus on doing your job. But in time, currently about three years and getting shorter, something changes. It could be the economy, the technology, the competition, the business model, your boss, or any of a host of other factors,but something changes, and you’re out of a job, starting over.

Ironically, this has worked for you in the past, because, in the latter half of the 20th century, the economy was always steadily expanding. So, there may not be a job here, but there will be one over there.

If you’re normal, you didn’t enjoy the job search much. In, fact, you probably hated it! In fact, you found the job search so distasteful, that, even as you read this, you are doing your utmost to actively forget everything possible about it!

Great. You have just turned your career over to your new employer, those nice people who will love you, and care for you, and with whom, holding hands and singing happy songs, you’ll most likely walk into a golden sunset!

But that won’t happen. Those nice people you want to love and care for you, having spent money to get you on board, are now staying up late at night trying to find a way to do business without you. And sooner or later they’ll find it!

There was, perhaps, a time when employees were viewed as the organization’s greatest asset. If so, that time is over. Today, the manager’s first thought when having to make a quick impact on the bottom line is, “Who can I get rid of?”

If you don’t invest the time and effort to manage the career you have so fortunately preserved, this will be your story.

Welcome to the 21st century! Wake up!

As you may know by now, the worst time to look for a job is when you don’t have one. The best time? Right now,when you’ve just gotten one. Why? There are multiple reasons, but they mostly center on mindset. I will guarantee you that your self-confidence is higher at this moment then when you had to get a job. You don’t need another one right now. And you’ve just proved to yourself that you have some value by getting this job. So now is the time to get out and about, and start meeting people who could be future employers, either in the company you just joined, or another one.

But if you’re normal, you’ll relax because the pressure’s off, and then get whacked in two to three years because you didn’t do anything to manage success.

Career management isn’t just about getting a job. Guess what? Getting the job is only getting to the starting line. You can’t manage what you don’t have.

I’ll be giving lots of tips regarding how you manage your career successfully from time to time in other posts. Pay attention.

Start by doing these 5 simple things: So You've Gotten a Great Job! Now What?