Listen up Ladies: Evaluating and Rethinking What’s Important to You

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I recently read an article on Forbes about the tendency for professional women of my generation to burn out of their careers by age 30. Seeing as how attorneys spend three years getting their JD and typically don’t receive that degree any earlier than age 25, that only leaves five years of practice before burning out! I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like a very good return on investment to me. As a recruiter, the most common reason candidates contact me is because they don’t like their current job and they want to find a job that they will like, which makes perfect sense to me. Everyone should like their job, given how much of their time and identity it consumes. But, for women especially, career goals and aspirations can change with time as your life at 35 is likely different than it was at 25.

As you consider whether you need to look elsewhere for career satisfaction, make sure you take both an objective and subjective approach to evaluating new opportunities. Though this advice can be helpful for both men and women, the aforementioned article got me thinking about how a woman in her early to mid-years of law practice should think about her career.

What do you enjoy the most about your practice? What do you enjoy the least? Is there a way to maximize what you like and minimize what you dislike by joining a more widely or narrowly defined practice group?
Do you prefer working for several different people or having one main point of contact? If it’s only one point of contact, is there a particular gender or work style you respond best to?
At this point, is compensation or lifestyle more important? What do you think your answer will be in five years? Try to create a hypothetical sliding scale of how many hours you’d be willing to sacrifice per week/month for a corresponding amount of money.
Does your current employer have women in power/leadership positions? Have these women been able to work flexible schedules or taken time off after having children? If so, are these women able to serve as mentors to you?

Of course, these are just a few questions to get you started as you consider whether you should change jobs before you reach that burn-out level. Regardless, it’s important to be proactive in your assessment of your current career and where you would like to it go in the future, so start taking stock now!

The original article I referenced can be found here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larissafaw/2011/11/11/why-millennial-women-are-burning-out-at-work-by-30/

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Nov201118

Liz Hudson

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