I’m so excited to start sharing what has been heavy on my heart and my mind over the past year as I discovered that life wasn’t quite working for me and sought out making a change. I’ve so wanted to share about this journey because I know so many others are facing the same challenges I am, but I wasn’t comfortable sharing publicly about a job search while it was happening. So now I can finally share all about it!
A quick life update: Today is my first day at my new job. It is a fully remote leadership position with a healthcare technology company. I was previously working in performance & operations improvement for a large healthcare system/hospital. I’ll be sharing a series of posts about what wasn’t working for me in my old situation, how I figured out what I needed, how I sought that out, and all about my experience throughout this whole journey with advice and tips along the way for those that might be in a similar boat. This first post will be about how I knew I needed a change and the steps I took to determine what I needed.
I feel like the idea of “balance” has been catching a lot of heat lately. I’ve been reading and hearing a lot about balance not being possible or achievable – that it doesn’t exist. I disagree. I think people are confusing balance with equity. When you’re juggling lots of things, it’s very difficult to achieve equity. But I don’t think that’s the goal of balance. To me, balance means there are times when my family needs me, so I shift more of my attention there. And there are times when I give a little more to work if I have a big project or presentation. And there are times when I’m not feeling centered myself and need to focus on my own self care a little more. That’s balance – the constant weighing of priorities and shifting of attention accordingly, and it nets out over the long-term. There probably isn’t a single week where I feel like everything is even – the baby, marriage, work, the house, friendships, self care. But that’s ok! That is balance. I think the mistake is believing that everything has to be perfect all the time in order to have “balance.” It’s not easy, but you create your own balance.
I found myself really limited in my ability to make these shifts on a week-to-week basis in order to achieve balance, which was resulting in me being very frustrated and unhappy. This does require having some flexibility and autonomy, which I didn’t have. I narrowed this down to 2 driving factors: our childcare situation and a lack of flexibility with my job. I posted about the change we made with our childcare arrangement here, which has truly been a gamechanger. The lack of flexibility with my job, paired with a desire that I’ve had for a while for career growth and progression, led me to the decision that it was time to search for a new job.
I’ve been doing basically the same type of work since I finished graduate school over 13 years ago. I’ve had promotions and grown within that field, of course, but all within the healthcare performance and operations improvement space. My passion, and the reason for choosing a career in healthcare, has always been to help transform the healthcare industry in our country. Throughout my career of partnering with healthcare professionals and leaders, we’ve been able to accomplish some amazing things that absolutely improve the care and experience for patients, however, I was starting to feel a bit burnt out and like I wasn’t able to achieve truly transformational change. So I really starting digging deep within myself, and also doing my research on the industry, to determine where I believed the future of healthcare was and what really got me excited and motivated. For years now, I’ve felt that true innovation in healthcare is going to come from technology. As an industry, it is so far behind when it comes to technology, and it is often a barrier in the day-to-day of delivery care, rather than the helpful tool it could be.
I’ve probably known deep down for many years that this is where my heart was and what I really wanted for my career, but I wasn’t quite sure how to break into that space since I don’t have a technology background. So I kept taking jobs in the same line of work I was already in, but just wasn’t feeling completely fulfilled. Once I became a mom, I really questioned what filled my time more than ever. That time became more precious because I had so much more on my plate, and I had a strong desire to make sure any time spent away from my baby was worthwhile.
So I knew that this wasn’t going to be the same as when I’d searched for jobs in the past. I wasn’t just looking for a job that I was qualified for and paid well. I was really looking for the right fit. After a lot of soul searching, this is what defined the “right fit” for me:
- Fulfilling my passion to transform healthcare via technology & innovation
- Flexible as far as work hours and location
- Not willing to relocate
- Preferred at least partial work from home
- An organization with a true learning culture
- Leadership role
I think defining what the “right fit” is for you is a critically important first step for anyone starting a job search. I knew these parameters would create a pretty narrow search for me that might take a long time, but I was OK with that. I knew it would be for the best in the long run.
With these parameters, I started to research companies that fit the profile of what I was looking for, and then looked for positions within those companies. That’s a little different than a normal search (where you search for keywords or job titles first), but I’ve learned from experience that company culture and mission was key to my satisfaction in the long-term. I set up alerts and kept an eye on companies that I felt really fit this profile and would support the work environment and culture that I desired, but didn’t have a position that fit my skillset open at that moment.
If you’re feeling at all unfulfilled by your current job/career or that it is a barrier to you living the life you want to live or achieving happiness, I encourage you to take the first step and really dig into why. Start making a list of those whys, and then try to determine what you would need to change or seek out to address each of them. I’d love to hear from you on what is critical for the “right fit” for you! And if you’re in the middle of this journey and don’t feel you can talk publicly about it yet, or just have questions or want some advice, please reach out to me – I’d love to help in any way that I can! Direct message on Instagram is best: @dancingbackwardsinhighheels
More to come in this series of posts about my experience!
Happy Monday!
Shannon
