mb Manage: Fight or Flight for Advancement

We help you decide whether it's time to leave your current job or angle for a promotion
By Maya Avrasin –
[Originally posted at MediaBistro.com]

With so many people hopscotching among magazines, there are days when the Revolving Door Newsletter looks more like musical chairs than an industry roundup. People tend to advance every time they jump, and some even stay at a magazine to get promoted within. But how exactly did they do it?

"I started looking for advancement after I had been an editorial assistant for almost two years at Us Weekly," says Kirsten Sardis, who is now entertainment editor for Clear Channel Online Music and Radio. "I felt I was already doing the work of an assistant editor and I wanted to be compensated with both a salary and title change -- and of course, I wanted more writing assignments. Luckily, they agreed."

Sardis' case is common enough for entry-level advancement, and in most situations, employers usually reward employees who exceed expectation and work diligently toward company goals -- regardless of their job description.

Use new responsibilities to propel promotion
Christine Ford, director of local content and special projects at Kaboose.com, says she's always looked for opportunities throughout her career, but cautions against seeming unhappy in one's current job. "Do it well and be positive and [management will] think of you when the time is right," she says. "I always [tried] to look for new, better ways of doing things and whenever I found free time from my regular duties, I would offer to take on other projects."

Chipping in also helps bulk up your portfolio and experience level, which will enable you to showcase your skills when job openings become available. Thea Palad, who is now fashion credits editor at Marie Claire, was promoted twice in three years when she started her career at More. "I'm always looking for advancement -- it's my primary motivator," she says. "If I'm working on a project, I give 110 percent. It's like, if you're going to half-ass it, why bother? [At
More], I worked my butt off and learned so much (with a small beauty and fashion department, I had a hand in everything)."

"I was quite happy at More and would not have left so soon, had I not been poached by
Life & Style."

If your current work environment continues to offer room for advancement, then according to many media pros, you are lucky. For everyone else, the time to move on in order to move up usually comes mid-level in your career path. "You know the signs when there is no advancement," says Kaboose.com's Ford. "They are always talking about not having a budget for anything, people leave and they don't replace them, other people don't move up either. You can usually see the writing on the wall. It can happen for several reasons. But when you are in that type of environment it's better to move on. You'll get jaded, stale and soft. You'll lose your edge and start saying, 'why bother.' When you feel yourself getting like that, move on before you become a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Hitting a current job's ceiling
Realizing that you have hit the ceiling in your current job is a scary revelation, and one filled with uncertainty. But everyone interviewed for this story took risks -- some that garnered big payoffs and some that led to unemployment. "It's difficult to map out a strategy in magazines," says Marie Claire's Palad. "Publications fold, editors play musical chairs, there's always office politics at play, and luck is such an important element to consider. Many times it's being at the right place at the right time, getting an inside tip or simply knowing the right people."

Comparatively, Palad's career path was pretty steady. After her four-year stint at More, she became associate beauty editor at Twist, which gave her more control over her duties, she says. After six months, she took over fashion. "I was quite happy there and would not have left so soon, had I not been poached by Life & Style," she says. After less than a year at Life & Style
as fashion market editor, Palad moved to Marie Claire.

In contrast, Kaboose.com's Ford found success after being laid off during the Internet bubble burst in 2000 -- shortly after launching ModernBride.com. Ford returned to print as managing editor of Working Mother and then started her own consulting business when she became a mother. It wasn't until she took a part-time job as a public relations director at a library that she realized she missed the dot-com work. "I had thought for awhile that I didn't want to go back into publishing, or dot-coms, but then I started applying all that I had learned in the big leagues to this little local library job," she says. "I realized how much I loved doing what I do, and that I was ready to go back to dot-coms."

When a change is required, work your connections
The more skills you acquire in your career, the easier it may be to advance. Plus, the more relationships you build from your various positions will help you along your journey. "You can definitely get a job if you send a resume, but I have always had better results when working through connections," says Kaboose.com's Ford. "The key is not to stay in contact just because you want to 'use' people later. Make friends with people that you like at the office and then stay in touch because you like them. And when you see an opportunity for someone else, let them know."

There seems to be a formula for getting promoted and advancing, but personality needs to be taken into account when identifying what position is right for you. "Your personality has an effect on advancement to an extent," says Clear Channel's Sardis . "If the job demands constant schmoozing and networking with people and you're not exactly a 'people person,' then it's understandable why you wouldn't be hired."

Nicole Caldwell, who recently was promoted to editor-in-chief at Playgirl, says identifying opportunities for advancement shouldn't just be about getting the top job. "It's a lot of options to weigh out; but more important than 'getting ahead,' I think, is being somewhere you can be happy and exhibit your creativity and skill," she says. Getting to the top of the masthead at Playgirl was never Caldwell 's ultimate goal, she says. "I didn't set out to do that; I just set out to outdo myself and this is where I've landed. It's no good being in a high-up position if you're forced to sacrifice the fun of your trade and be miserable. Better to shine and do your thing."

Circuitous Routes of a Young Woman's Life

My scissors clipped at long strands of hair, falling slowly to the floor while my subject cringed in hopes I wouldn't take too much off. It was a few minutes before we were relaxed enough to allow the story-telling to begin. Haircuts—whether at a barber shop or in an apartment's kitchen—carry on a strange societal tradition of the cuttee talking as though he or she is on a shrink's couch. Floodgates open; thoughts fall out of a person's mouth in an uninterrupted stream of consciousness. I trimmed and combed while listening. Hair shorter and stories told, another wall breaks down. A foot takes one step forward. Breath comes just a bit easier: We're all going to make it.

A young man sitting next to me on the Greyhound stopped in the middle of our conversation years ago to look out the window. Turning back to face me, he asked, "Ya know what romp-a-rooms are? The little rooms for kids where they can like, defy gravity? You remind me of those."
"Why?" I asked him.
"Just cuz you remind me of a place I've been."

Sometimes you get hopelessly lost and end up at an impossible spot you never could have gotten to even with directions. The planets align and you're led, as if by a water-finding stick or dowser. You arrive somewhere maybe you didn't want to go; or you get to a place different from where you thought you were headed. Maybe you weren't thinking at all, and then there you were. Your metaphorical hitchhiking thumb is in the air already: You haven't got a choice but to take the ride, along some circuitous route leading you to the people and places you most want to call home.

Where Else Were We?

Vaya sirena màs guapa que acaba de salir del mar
(look at the lovely mermaid that just came out of the sea)

We dipped our feet in the freezing ocean water a little before midnight. God, the moon was bright. I was the closest to prayer I'd been in years. Writing this all down the following day, I would try to record a sentiment of never having left—but would quickly discover there wasn't anything with which to build a case. Yes, everything is the same. But everything is also very different; changed within the span of an entrance into and exit out of the sea.

You can go from town to town in this country and have that same sense: each city different, but so many commonalities. Always a Main Street, always a library. Always a white-haired man handing out pamphlets about the fast-track to salvation (Jesus, doncha know). Part of the adventure is finding differences in the places you go so you can keep track of your movements. Like, the smell of a place: an open field, or an attic, pillow, or the inside of a book. "It smells the same," he told me of a small town in Texas. "Just like I remember it." Just like the smell of the space where a neck meets a shoulder blade; or a tree just after the first leaves have fallen in autumn.

The man standing behind a bodega check-out counter watched my approach, keeping his eyes on me as he rang up the purchase. "Did you just get out of work?" he asked. "No," I said, smiling. "I was at a friend's show." "So now what?" "I'm heading home," I told him, then laughed. "Now you know everything."

He handed me a small bag with my receipt. We locked eyes. "Next time," he said, "I will know more."

From the Road

Nashville is awesomeness.; Nashville is America unaffected by glamour and fads. Nashville is unobstructed music made excellent by its people's earnestness. Nashville is guitars slung over girls' and boys' shoulders. Nashville is a G-sharp harmonica blown perfectly. Nashville is honky tonk and riff raff realized.

Put me in line at a stuffy bus station waiting for the next Greyhound to roll through; and in a matter of minutes I promise I'll get right down to who I am. I'll pack light (some T-shirts, books, a flask and some PB&J's); I'll bring plenty of pens and extra film; if you'll only put me in line at the bus station.

Give me Frito/Budweiser picnics on plastic chairs in gas station parking lots after dark; give me James Joyce served fresh upon waking. Give me a journal full of blank pages, and an old beat-up 35 mm camera. The world offers herself most earnestly to those who open their arms widest.

The Clockworks

A homeless man with no legs frequents the front of Citarella grocery store on Sixth Avenue near my apartment. I stare at his hands as I walk by, trying to make out the titles of thick books he reads; I have yet to decipher one. On a recent stroll, I found a little bird seated next to him on the sidewalk; instead of a book, his hands held bread that he ripped up and dropped in little pieces at the bird's feet. Man-hands and birdy couldn't have been more than 4 inches apart. It was beautiful to see, as the rest of Manhattan shuffled around the three of us unawares.

If I could travel through time, I wonder, would I go backward or forward? ("I miss Nicole so much," the message said. "I want to tell her, but I'm telling you instead.") If I go back, there's that pesky business about butterflies, hurricanes, and apocalyptic effects of changing what has been. But if today is tomorrow, that's the case no matter which way I go. I hate it when I catch myself saying one thing and meaning another.

I wonder if we can know anything for sure; even down to the tiniest, most base detail. Like these atoms between my fingertips and this keyboard; I can't even really say I'm making physical contact with the keys themselves. By that "logic," is it possible that all we do is gamble on the unknown and pray for the best? But if that's so, how does a girl judge what to do, or determine what's right? If I showed the boy-version of the homeless man at Citarella video footage of him legless, dirty, feeding a small bird on a warm Manhattan afternoon, would the young child believe this was his future self? Might he look down, see himself standing on two legs, and reject my intervention? Would he then decide to go forward or back in time; would he climb into the time machine at all?

"Don't let the stresses of the real world make you forget that all it takes is a bus ticket and Finnegan," the postcard said. The next morning I gave notice that I'll be skipping town for a little bit to let that background buzz in my brain take a nice, slow coffee break (black, no sugar). All this musing [Do we sometimes feel so strongly about things because part of us views said things as open outlets; safe for the improbability of them actually being tangible?], on time travel and what might be or have been, wobbles my knees.

I waver. I blink. Long breath in; hold it, then out. I wonder if there's another way; then see there is only through. "I'm happy for you," a friend told me. "It's been a long time coming." And, after all, I suppose it has. See you guys on the other side.

Members of the Karass

Kurt Vonnegut wrote in "Cat's Cradle" of the world's two greatest social organizations: the karass, 'a team that do[es] God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing;' and the granfalloon, a 'false karass,' a people who make associations based on states, countries of origins, sporting teams, etc. 'If you wish to study a granfalloon,' Vonnegut wrote, 'just remove the skin of a toy balloon.' "The Celestine Prophecy" says if you see a stranger three separate times, they have something to tell you; maybe a lesson.

I like the sound of all these things.

It was the winter of 2001 in St. Augustine, Fla. I wandered cobblestone streets barefooted with my bohemian boyfriend, taking in the warm air, wild armadillos, and street music. Frank and Mary Schaap, two hobos who could play a mean steel guitar and tenor sax, and whose voices made you feel like you were at some speakeasy in Harlem, enchanted. I spent hours by their music's side. Their $5 CD wormed its way into many mixed tapes I made for years to come. With no Web site or working e-mail, there was no way to follow up. And though it's the strangest thing to say, I thought about them a lot and missed them. When I heard St. Augustine made street performers subject to fines or arrest, I wondered about Frank and Mary.

So it follows, naturally, that I walked through Central Park Saturday afternoon very much as I did in St. Augustine six years ago; albeit with shoes and without a heavy hiking pack or boyfriend. The second I heard his guitar, hair stood up on my arms. I lurched forward. New teeth. More wrinkles. But that voice—I crept close to his open guitar case to inspect the name on his CD: Frank Schaap.

He finished his song and looked up at me. "Nice boots," he said. It would be 15 more minutes before I could relate to him how I'd tripped through a wormhole only to find him there, in the Big Apple. This very obvious member of my karass seemed mostly unimpressed. "Yeah, Mary and I are playing a gig down in DUMBO tonight," he offered matter-of-factly. What an outlaw. I bought Frank's new CD, $15, with shakey hands. We still have one more meeting to go.

Run-ins like this make me believe anything is possible. Is this naivety?

"Not naive," Conch Shell had corrected him, "[S]he simply has not been taught to fear the things you fear." (Tom Robbins, "Skinny Legs and All")

Thanks, Conch. Sometimes I wish it were so simple.