Reflection: Four take aways from my recent career move experience
Through my interaction on LinkedIn, I reconnected with a former NHS boss. She saw my work on LinkedIn doing my research and the conference that I was organising for 19 March 2022. She got in touch, and we had a chat about the persistent issues within the NHS, the development of the ICSs, and the pressures brought about by the pandemic. It has led to major recruitment, retention, and transformation challenges within the NHS and the broader health and social care sector. I shared some of the findings of my PhD research into highly skilled migrant women and my understanding of the broader workforce transformation, recruitment, and retention topics through my immersion into the various literature on organisational leadership and Human Resources Management (HRM). We also discussed why I held the conference on highly skilled migrant women and leadership, how organisations are missing the trick by recruiting workers internationally but failing to look after them, and how this leads to attrition. The details are for another day. Today I wanted to focus on what transpired following those very fruitful meetings with her.
She said she saw the knowledge I was holding; I have been researching the topics formally for more than three years. Additionally, I have had many years of lived and observed experience through my personal and professional life as a migrant woman. I have also spent the last three years as a lecturer in HRM and Organisational Behaviour (OB). She asked me if I could help her with a piece of work she was conducting in workforce planning (no confidential information shared). It was more around workforce scoping and planning tools and how she could work around some possible challenges. Later she asked me to consider applying for the transformation and retention roles within the NHS. She felt I would be of great value and contribute to the current work related to workforce transformation and retention and the transition into the integrated care systems (ICS) and integrated care boards (ICB).
On 12 February 2022, I searched for jobs in the remit of workforce transformation and retention. I completed eight applications in one day. Yes, eight in one day, the NHS application is so straightforward that as long as you have done your scoping and are very clear about the roles you want, you can make as many applications as you need to in one go. That has always been my strategy because I always think it’s better to cast my net wide than apply for one job and then wait for the result, just in case it is rejected. No matter how strong one is, rejects sting a little. Therefore, having other responses to look forward to keeps the morale going. From the week that followed, I started receiving invitations to interviews. I received invitations for seven of the eight roles I had applied for and one rejection.
Here is what followed; I attended the first interview on 25 February. It was a phone interview. It was a weird one. As the manager fired a question at me, I answered, and she went on to the next, and the next, it felt regimented and directive. She then told me that was the first step. I had no prior information about how many interview steps were there. After that phone call, I decided it did not feel like the right place for me to work. So I went into the system and withdrew from that application. The following day I travelled to Zambia, my home country, as I had planned an urgent visit during enhancement week at the university (non-teaching week). I received two further invitations for interviews that happened to fall when I was in Zambia, so I withdrew from those two, leaving me with four. I didn’t mind at the point; after all, I was making the applications not because I was immediately desperate for a new job but to test my CV and see what was out there. If all fails, I thought I would sit down again another time and send more applications.
Fortunately, I got further interview invitations from the remaining applications. On my return from Zambia, I attended the first of the remaining interviews. The following day, which was a Friday, I got a call back letting me know that I was in the final three candidates. However, they could not decide who they wanted, citing that we all had something small missing. Thus they had decided to interview the three of us again, and they gave me a date for the second interview the Wednesday of the following week. This addition meant that I had three interviews in the same following week and one the week after. So the new week started, and I attended the next interview on my list. I received an offer the same day. With excitement, I accepted, and they started the pre-employment checks. I now had two more interviews, and the second interview was pending. So I contacted the people offering the second interview to withdraw from the race as I thought there was nothing new to give them to prove that I could do the job justice.
I attended another interview in the same week and was told I would hear from them the following week. So the following week, I got the offer. So now I had two offers; I contacted some of my trusted friends and discussed the two offers, and it was clear where I would make more of a difference. I still had one more interview to attend the following day, I decided to try it out this time to see if I would get it too, and I did! Three offers, wow, I thought, I am in demand. But I tried not to let that get to my head and keep the recruiting managers waiting. Ultimately, I chose one and contacted the other two to withdraw. I am a contribution and values-driven person; I like working where I feel I positively contribute and add value to people’s lives, hence my love for the NHS. Many have asked if I was ever a nurse. No have never been; I have worked in other sectors too, but I had felt most at home when I ran my charitable organisation for ten years and the health care jobs. I know I made the right choice out of the three. The difficult part was letting the other recruiting managers know I would not be taking the jobs they thought I was the best candidate for and offered me the roles. Especially the one where I had accepted a conditional offer and already started the pre-employment checks. They had even already received my reference.
The copy and paste response of “you were great but there was only one candidate who did better” was a common feature in my research. Now I was that candidate who did better than the others, but I wasn’t taking the jobs. The juxtaposition of privilege and guilt was real for me. I’m sharing this with you because I want to encourage anyone who thinks these jobs are not for us because we are migrants, ethnic minorities, or Black Africans. I believe you can only know whether you’re good enough by trying. I received three job offers in two weeks because I tried. But most importantly, if I hadn’t put myself out there on LinkedIn, sharing my research and my conference, my former boss wouldn’t have known what I was doing because it’s been a while since I worked with them. Additionally, without their nudge, I wouldn’t have thought to look and see what was available to me. Thus, it’s not a sheer stroke of luck; I don’t believe anything comes with just luck. I believe it’s about being strategic, sharing what you know, taking opportunities, and diversifying. I didn’t apply for just one position; I submitted eight. They were comparable, so it wasn’t too much effort. I had to alter things depending on their job description and personal specification, but most of the requirements were met by my career experiences.
If you’re unhappy in your career and want to make a change, or if you’re just ambitious (it’s okay to be ambitious), keep looking and apply to as many jobs as possible. That way, you won’t feel that they won’t take you or don’t like you because when you have so many applications out there, some will be rejections, some will be near rejections, and some will be acceptances. And trust me, I won’t lie that it was a joyful moment to see that these organisations all wanted me and felt I had the skills to fill their positions, but there was also a little bit of guilt in me for the fact that they offered me the jobs, and then I was going to turn some of them down.
On reflection, the guilt I felt had to do with our mentality of always thinking we have to do the best, but the recruiter is doing us a favour by offering us the job. In actual fact, it is a two-way street. When you come to think of it, I would have accepted all those offers, and then they would have decided I didn’t meet the pre-employment checks and gone on to find someone else. Such is life, I guess. If you have read this far, Thank you.
The four takeaways I emphasise from this experience are:
- Make sure your LinkedIn profile is complete and share strategically as much of your experience and knowledge, not to show off but to let people know what value you can offer them. The right opportunity may be a post or an interaction away from you.
- Be clear and confident about what you want and go for it. When in doubt, download ten applications in the areas that meet your skills and look for the common threads and those things you feel are within your field. Unless you are in a specialised profession like a surgeon or a dentist, try not to be too narrow in your search. If you are in business, HRM, Psychology and the like, many intertwined skills will work for you.
- Take each interview as a rehearsal for your next role until you get the right one. It takes away the anxious thoughts, which in many cases make us underperform in the interview. Someone once said, “you are the star of the show; those people don’t know you, so they will judge you based on how you show up on the day”. If you have been shortlisted, you have proved you have the right credentials for the job; celebrate that. It will boost your confidence. Will you present as someone they can bring into their camp at the interview? Woo them by confidently telling them what they will gain by employing you. Remember, employers are humans first, and humans are territorial by nature.
- It is okay to turn down a job if your intuition says it is not the right fit. During the interviews, it is not just them thinking can they work with you; you are also gauging if you can fit into their space. Ask yourself, “do I want to work with this boss?”.
That’s all for today; watch out for my next article. In the meantime, join the community and share your thoughts and learn from us and other career-driven people. Visit our membership page https://www.migrantsleadershipinstitute.com/membership
