Building a career also means understanding what you are really looking for, why it matters to you and what a new opportunity should offer to help you make an informed choice.
You can probably explain quite easily what you do every day. Your area of expertise, your responsibilities, the matters you work on, the type of clients you advise. You may also know what you would like to do next.
But can you explain why?
Why did you become a lawyer or legal counsel? Why did you choose this area of law, this firm, this company? And why do you now want more responsibility, more remote working, better pay or a different working environment?
More than ten years ago, I wrote an article about self-awareness in the legal profession. Since then, my perspective has changed. So has my own career. Through my work in legal recruitment, I now speak with lawyers and legal counsel at a particular point in their careers: when they are considering a change.
One conviction has only grown stronger: knowing your profession well does not necessarily mean having a clear understanding of what you need from your career.
A CV provides a fairly good answer to a first question: what can I do? When you start thinking about the next stage of your career, a second question arises: what do I want?
More responsibility. A different specialisation. A smaller organisation. A better work-life balance. More flexibility. Higher pay. A different team. Better career prospects.
That list is useful. But a third question may be even more important: why do I want it?
After the ‘what’ comes the ‘why’
It is sometimes easier to know what you no longer want than to define what you are actually looking for.
A difficult relationship with your manager, repetitive work, pay that you consider insufficient or a lack of prospects can all be very good reasons to consider leaving. But knowing what you no longer want is not enough to define what you are looking for.
Take a fairly common expectation: ‘I would like more responsibility.’ Why? To make more decisions? Manage a team? Keep learning? Have more impact? Gain recognition that is missing today? Or simply because you naturally associate career progression with greater responsibility?
On the surface, the same expectation. Underneath, very different motivations.
The same applies to many criteria. Wanting to work remotely more often may reflect a need for autonomy, family circumstances, a long commute or simply a preference for working somewhere quiet.
None of these reasons is better than another. The point is not to uncover a more noble motivation, but to understand why a particular criterion matters to you.
A great opportunity, but for whom?
That is what makes the expression ‘great opportunity’ so relative. A prestigious role, very well paid and offering genuine career prospects, may be an excellent opportunity for one person and the wrong choice for another.
The content of the role, pay, the manager, colleagues, autonomy, culture, location, pace of work or career prospects can all matter. But they do not matter equally, or in the same way, to everyone.
Priorities change too. What matters at 27 may no longer be a priority at 37 or 47. At one stage, learning and accelerating your career may take centre stage. At another, autonomy, pay, stability, time or the quality of management may carry more weight.
There is probably no ideal job that will continue to meet all these expectations over time. A different question seems more useful to me: what matters enough to me today to guide my choices?
Choosing almost always involves trade-offs. More responsibility can mean more pressure. A smaller organisation may offer greater autonomy but fewer resources. Significantly higher pay may come with higher expectations. A prestigious name on your CV does not guarantee an experience that will suit you.
Knowing yourself better also means understanding which trade-offs you are prepared to accept — and where your limits lie.
Other people can play a role in that reflection without making the decision for you. A manager, colleague or someone close to you can help you identify a strength, a frustration or a blind spot. A recruiter can share their knowledge of the market with you, challenge certain expectations and, above all, ask questions.
In my conversations with candidates, it is natural to talk about what they do today and what they would like to do next. The conversation often becomes richer when we explore the reasons behind those expectations. Not to convince someone to change jobs, but to understand what could genuinely justify a move.
What should a career move actually bring?
Knowing yourself better does not necessarily mean changing jobs. It may lead you to look elsewhere for what you no longer find in your current role, to develop your role further or to confirm that it still matches your priorities. What matters is understanding what you expect from a change before deciding to make one.
A few questions may be enough to get started.
What gives me energy at work? What drains it? What do I no longer want? What do I absolutely want to find in my next role? Which of my criteria are priorities? Why? Where am I prepared to compromise?
And perhaps two more questions to look a little further ahead:
If nothing changes, where do I see myself in two or three years?
What would a new opportunity need to offer to justify a move?
Those answers will probably not always remain the same. A career evolves through experiences, encounters, successes, disappointments and life outside work.
What matters is not having all the answers, but continuing to ask yourself the right questions.
That does not guarantee that you will make the perfect decision. But at least you will know why you are making it.