January 30, 2003 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Q: My “career” has included several short-term positions. For the last dozen years, I’ve worked in youth development, focusing on job-readiness programs. I have an undergraduate degree in business administration and some for-profit management experience, but I can’t seem to move up. I have made lateral moves to continue working, but sometimes I feel like I’m going backward. How can I break this trend?
A: It may be time for a thorough assessment of your current skills and abilities, and how they match up with the needs of youth-oriented charities. Mary Stelletello, director of grants at the International Youth Foundation, in Baltimore, which supports programs for needy young people worldwide, notes that nonprofit groups have become more businesslike over time, as donors and foundations have begun to expect more accountability from the programs they support. As a result, she says, the people who move up the ladder fastest are those with excellent business, strategic, and organizational skills.
To get to the next level, Ms. Stelletello suggests, you might have to strengthen yourself in those areas, through academic courses or professional seminars. Taking a personality test, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory or the Strong Interest Inventory, may help you discover your personal strengths and weaknesses, and lead to a more appropriate set of career goals, she says. A career counselor or human-resources specialist may be able to give you these or similar tests. Or you can test yourself: Paladin Associates is a nonprofit organization that sells official online versions of the Myers-Briggs and Strong Interest tests for about $60 each.
But no test results or other external measure can tell you what your ultimate career goal should be. Once you’ve decided on a destination — be it executive director, or program director, or something else — you need to map out a plan to get there. It helps to have a sense of the overall market in your particular field and geographic area. You need to know if job-readiness programs are being cut or decreased in your state, and whether you have opportunities to make contact with others who work in your field. If the local nonprofit leadership is a closed club, says Ms. Stelletello, you might need to consider a move to a larger or more open market.
Finally, reach out to others in your quest to pull yourself up the ladder. Talk to others who have the jobs you want, to learn how they got there. Look for a mentor. And practice those management skills, says Ms. Stelletello: “It helps if you can put yourself in a position where you must supervise other people — whether that’s just one person such as an intern or assistant, or a staff, or a number of volunteers.”
