February 04, 2008, 1:22 PM — Short of being handed your walking papers, there are
often telltale signs that it's time to look for a new job: You haven't been
promoted since the Clinton administration. The most exciting assignments are
routinely handed to your peers or underlings. Your desk keeps moving farther
and farther from where the action is.
But some indicators are less obvious, such as subtle shifts in an IT organization's
structure that can result in career stagnation. A variety of career experts,
headhunters, recruiters, CIOs and IT staffers gave us their takes on when it's
time to move on.
1 Your role has become marginalized. If you're being bypassed for promotions
or interesting assignments, or they're consistently being offered instead to
IT workers in subordinate positions, "that would be an obvious sign,"
says Robert Rosen, CIO at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal
and Skin Diseases in Bethesda, Md., and past president of Share, an IBM user
group in Chicago.
Often, the handwriting is on the wall. You just need to stop, step back and
read it. "If you feel like you're no longer contributing, there's a good
chance you may not be," says Frank Hood, CIO at QIP Holder LLC (Quiznos)
in Denver.
2 You've stopped growing."If you're not learning every day, if you're
not doing new things, and if you're not improving," it's time to move on,
says Sara Garrison, senior vice president of product and solutions development
at Sabre Holdings Corp. in Southlake, Texas.
Red lights should be flashing if you've effectively been in the same role for
two or three years and haven't taken on any significant new challenges during
that time frame, says Umesh Ramakrishnan, vice chairman of CTPartners,
an executive recruiting firm in New York.
3 You're not part of the big picture. Most CIOs assemble a road map of where
they intend to take their organizations over the next 12 to 60 months, including
the top IT-business projects they plan to work on, notes Joe Trentacosta, CIO
at Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative in Hughesville, Md. If there are a
lot of upcoming projects that don't include your area of expertise or in which
you may play a minor role at best, "that's a warning sign," he says.
Further, if you've been relegated to a commodity-type IT function that offers
little value to the organization or can easily be outsourced, "it's time
to move on to a new opportunity," says Hans Keller, chief technology officer
at the National Aquarium in Baltimore.
4 You've been excluded. If you're a CIO or other senior IT manager, the alarms
can include your not being asked to participate in new business decisions or
being excluded from formal or informal executive committee meetings, says Craig
Urrizola, CIO at Saladinos Inc. in Fresno, Calif. The view is equally bleak
if you're an IT staffer whose input on new projects is no longer requested or
is sought on just a limited basis.
5 Your level of influence is waning. A CIO certainly has more clout within an
organization than a network engineer. But all IT professionals possess some
level of influence within their work teams or at least among their own peer
groups. If you see your powers of persuasion shrinking, Keller suggests that
it's time to move on.
6 You no longer enjoy the work. "Someone once told me that we're not here
for a long time; we're here for a good time," says Michael Nieset, managing
partner for the technology practice at Heidrick & Struggles International
Inc. in Cleveland. "If you're not excited about the projects you're working
on, fix it," he says. "If you are wholly engaged, passionate about
what you're doing and doing what you're good at, you'll be fulfilled and rewarded
accordingly. Sometimes people stay in suboptimal situations because it's comfortable
for them. You have to take control."
7 Continuous improvement isn't part of the mantra. Sometimes, there are organizational
changes -- or lack thereof -- that you should regard as career alerts. These
include stagnation within a corporation or an IT department. If your IT organization
has been using the same application development techniques for the past 15 years
and has made no effort to update its approach, "then something's wrong,"
says David Van De Voort, a principal consultant in Mercer LLC's Chicago office.
If your company is unwilling to invest in continuous improvement processes
such as CMMI, ITIL or Six Sigma, it may be time to seek a company that is, he
adds.
