"Straight Up" Works Best for Martinis - Not Resumes

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Sept 1, 2004 by Karen Danziger

Byline: Karen Danziger

Career paths that progress straight upward - promotion followed by promotion, each bringing increased responsibility, status and income - are so last century. For starters, it's increasingly difficult to achieve, given the conditions in the magazine industry, and more important, it may not be the best way to achieve your long-term career goals; sometimes a lateral move, or even a downward one, will get you further by giving you greater experience.

This runs against conventional wisdom, which holds that to get to the top you have to keep focused on the next rung. But after years of seeing the best and the brightest candidates hopscotch through a range of jobs - sometimes dropping out entirely to attend to family concerns or dialing back to take care of young children - employers do not expect a resume that shows a steady, vertical climb.

The primary reason to move laterally in title, responsibility or compensation is to diversify your skill set and knowledge base. The payoff is having more to offer an employer in the short term, and having greater career and income potential in the long term.

You might, for example, take on a new content area, move from writing to editing, or go from trade to consumer. You can also break a pattern in your work history before it's too late. Job seekers often plead, "I don't want to be pigeonholed." They are frustrated when they don't get calls for different kinds of work. But it's no surprise, because I see that their resumes are totally one-dimensional: pure travel, pure entertainment, etc. I can't present that kind of resume to the developer of a new parenting Website, for example - even though the candidate may, in fact, have terrific abilities. My advice: After your third position in a specific content area, you may need to move sideways or even backward to do something new.

Bernadette Grey, currently Editor-in-Chief of Scholastic Administrator magazine, made such a move years ago when her background was exclusively in the computer industry. She moved laterally from EIC of Home Office Computing to Working Woman magazine. Instead of going to Comdex every year, she was speaking to women about managing their work and family lives. Today, her background has far more breadth than it ever would have if she'd stayed in computer magazines.

Taking a position of equal or lesser responsibility may, in fact, be the only option when you're trying to make a major move, such as into print from online. Employers often don't buy the argument that "an editor is an editor," or "If I can run an online business, I can run a print business, too." For people in their 20s and early 30s who went directly to new media after college and now want a print job, a pay cut may be required as well. The sacrifice should pay off in time, however, producing a stronger resume than an online-only CV.

It's also worth noting that such a move may simply show that you can switch gears. Experience with different types of publications (news vs. features, weekly vs. monthly) shows versatility, which multiplies the possibilities when it comes to placing you. The investment lesson of the 1990s - diversify your portfolio - also applies to publishing: Do whatever you can to protect yourself from the fluctuations in what's hot and what's not in this business. Unlike newspaper journalists, who are presumed to be capable of covering any beat, magazines want to see proof on your resume.

Being "pegged" is a common problem, since the first goal of a resume reviewer is to weed people out! If you've spent too much time in an area that is not of interest to the prospective employer, you are likely to end up on the "no" pile. That also applies to those who have spent too much time at a single organization. Hiring managers are quick to say, "After 20 years at Time Inc. can this candidate really survive anywhere else?" Another concern: "He's probably too spoiled by the huge budgets of Company X." So this is another good reason for moving around, even if it's laterally.

Moving to a similar role in another company, and doing well, shows adaptability; the hiring manager will be less afraid about taking you out of your comfort zone. Moving from company to company also enables you to work under a variety of leaders, gaining insight from different mentors and gleaning as much wisdom as possible. No additional schooling can take the place of working under, say, Ellen Levine or Bonnie Fuller, when it comes to learning how to produce quality magazines.

By the same token, people who become top editors too early in their careers invariably lack certain tricks of the trade, which are harder to learn once you're at the top. Experimenting at the highest levels can be too risky, causing you to rely too heavily on what in your own (narrow) experience has worked, and limiting the range of options you might consider. Taking your time to move up helps ensure that you are ready for that next role, and avoids another problem: If you want to step backward, after a quick ascent to the top of the ladder, employers are likely to say you're overqualified.