An Ode to the In-Between Job
By: Aimee Dyamond
Tags: Jobs, Work, Careers, Career Development, Career Advice

1. Make Your Role Better Than It Was Before

It’s tempting to trudge along in the role, seeing it only for its immediate utility — the paycheck. This is a self-limiting mindset.

At first glance, your In-Between Job might seem ill-fitted to your skillset and education level. You may feel resentful about having to do tasks that nearly anyone could do. You may ask yourself as you serve coffee, file papers or sweep the floor, ‘I studied a Master’s degree for this?’

Here’s my suggestion.

Take on the challenge. Improve the role. Bring something to it that wasn’t there before. There are many ways to do this:

Introduce new, better ways of doing things.

Find or create new resources to support and enhance the work you do.

Do your research. Find evidence supporting your way of working. This may be valuable when you eventually hand over the role to somebody else and move on to greater things!

Streamline processes to make tasks easier for yourself and others.

Suggest ways to solve existing problems.

Make meaningful, strategic connections with people and organizations that can support and augment the work you do.

All this above your pay grade, you say? I say it doesn’t matter. Your value is more than your current role. It’s more than the sum of all the jobs you’ve ever done.

2. Show Yourself

Don’t underestimate the power in doing a good job, even if it seems menial. Make your actions visible. The right people will notice what you bring to the role. You don’t need to brag about anything — just do things well and your efforts will be seen.

If you show what you can do with a combination of humility and resolve, your actions may light up areas within the organization to which you can further contribute internally. If you’re fortunate enough to have an observant manager, they’ll recognize your contributions and may offer to expand your role — or you could propose this yourself!

3. Maximum Impact Mindset

The entirety of your role — no matter how overqualified you are for it — is greater than the sum of its parts. When that pesky thought creeps into your mind telling you that you wasted your time slogging away in college only to find yourself in a job that doesn’t require much more than work ethic and common sense, try to remind yourself that you bring something unique to it.

The role wouldn’t be the same occupied by someone else. You bring a unique set of cumulative experiences to the table, the combination and chronological sequence of which may prove invaluable in making permanent improvements to the role. With a growth mindset, you can maximize your impact while you’re in the job, however long or brief that may be.

In my In-Between Job — a maternity contract at a community-based non-profit— I was in a unique position of joining an organization that, faced with an extraordinary set of circumstances, was trying to stay open safely and simultaneously provide an essential service during the evolving pandemic. My day-to-day work was a combination of ‘just surviving’ and trying to enhance things in any way I could. In every adversity there’s opportunity, right? Here was my chance to demonstrate flexibility, creativity and grit. New needs were arising among our service users as a result of the chaos. Now I could help address them.

To maximize my impact under difficult circumstances, I planned mindfully for each session, responding to emergent needs that I observed in my day-to-day interactions. My team focused a lot of its energy on COVID-19 management within the workplace, and rightly so. However, I couldn’t help noticing that sanitizing workstations and equipment and ensuring that staff maintained a physical distance from one another, albeit vital for us to stay open and compliant with health regulations, took away from our core service.

In stressful situations, there’s always a risk of focusing excessively on one aspect of managing a problem to the detriment of the actual service and its core value. With so many staff members already conscientiously keeping the workspace as COVID-free as possible, I made a conscious effort to keep my role focused primarily on the service users in addition to maintaining health and safety standards, obviously.

Your In-Between Job may be a placeholder, but you can still make a great impact if you set your mind to it.

4. Get a Taste for Leadership

If possible, take on leadership responsibility. This could be in small ways, like spearheading a minor project or offering to take responsibility for seeing an essential task through to the end. You don’t have to burn yourself out with this, either. Being willing to take on smaller, temporary leads on tasks shows potential for more permanent leadership roles in the future and allows you to position yourself as such on your CV when applying for your next gig.

Taking initiative is also a form of leadership. It’s self-leadership.

Staying two steps ahead of the curve is a fundamental trait of a good leader. Don’t wait for instructions. Tune into your environment, be aware enough to identify things that need to be done, be bold enough to do them, but discerning enough to know if doing them is within your scope. There’s a fine balance between taking initiative with tasks and stepping on the toes of those already assigned to them.

5. Maximize Your Learnings —And Make Sure They’re Transferable!

Every experience, no matter how seemingly insignificant, contains learning opportunities that can be mined. Even if the duties themselves aren’t challenging, you can learn from the people you meet in your In-Between Job. Observe how they approach tasks, how they manage conflict and deal with challenges. How are their approaches different to your own? Is there anything you can learn from how your colleagues behave in their roles? Have you observed behaviours or attitudes that you don’t want to emulate going forward?

Work experience isn’t always about gaining hard, technical skills. The working world today places (disproportionate) emphasis on technical ability, but often neglects softer, more difficult-to-obtain skills like empathic listening, problem-solving, conflict management, assertiveness and leadership. While the In-Between Job might not leave you with enviable abilities in the Adobe Suite or transform you into an expert coder, it will certainly allow you to build on the more elusive but equally important softer skills that are becoming increasingly sought after.

The In-Between Job can also teach you about what you like, dislike, desire and don’t desire. Observe your preferences as they become illuminated through doing. The more you do, the more you’ll discover about yourself. If it helps, write down your learnings and preferences in a reflective journal to keep track of your progress.

6. Reflect On Your Experiences

Reflection is the practice of intentionally considering your actions, evaluating them critically and drawing out key learnings that can be applied to subsequent actions. Reflection is most useful when done habitually and while you’re still in the job. However, if you’re thinking about an In-Between Job that you’ve recently moved on from, consider reflection as a private exit interview with yourself. Think about the experience while it’s still fresh in your mind.

How are you better off now than you were before you started? How has the job equipped you for the next step? What was interesting or exciting about the job? Did it surprise you that these particular things interested you? What was unexpected? What frustrated you? If you really can’t think of anything positive about the job, list the things you hated. They, too, provide important learnings

Many things frustrated me about my In-Between Job. Reflecting on these helped me figure out whether my level of frustration was justified or if there were deeper reasons why some stuff just got to me, reasons that my high-strung personality, attitudes and preconceptions, often rigid expectations or impatient temperament might better account for.

7. Document What You Did

The truth is, we don’t always acknowledge what we do well. You might have had a significant impact in your role that you didn’t recognize.

Sadly, you can’t always rely on others to validate your contributions. However, through daily reflection you can dissolve that innate self-deprecation to make your achievements and strengths more visible to your own self-critical eye. Ultimately, it’s up to you to acknowledge your accomplishments, however minor they may seem. Consider it a bonus if somebody else in your team does, too.

Document your strengths and achievements! Keep a written record of specific scenarios where you refined an existing idea or introduced something new to the role, how you applied your knowledge in this instance and the tangible results that followed.

Keeping track of your triumphs will position you as a strong candidate for an internal promotion. Referring to your good works systematically is an excellent way to justify expanding your existing role, proving that you’re capable of taking on additional responsibilities. To demonstrate competency when applying for your next career-moving job beyond your current organization, cite specific scenarios from your progress journal where you exceeded expectations. This is an equally valuable document to revisit in times of self-doubt when the daily slog blurs your perspective.

8. Bigger Picture View

Right now, you might feel stuck and frustrated. I get that.

Think back twelve months from today. How have things changed since then? How are things different? How are they the same? Do you like the changes you see? Did you expect, back then, that you’d be where you are right now?

Circumstances can shift dramatically in a relatively short space of time. Twelve months ago, I was in an entirely different place. Quite literally. I was worlds apart from where I am now. I lived in a semi-desert town with ancient potholed roads, electricity blackouts and very little infrastructure. Fast forward less than a year and I’m living in a society where I can buy Guatemalan avocados and Iranian pomegranates in the same grocery haul and order almost anything I want off Amazon.

I may not have the job I want right now. But I have a job. This in-between phase is part of the process. I made a massive change by uprooting my life at the start of this year. Growing pains are to be expected. In a year of spectacular disruption, both personally and globally, things aren't going to go accordingly to plan. I can’t think of a single person for whom this annus horribilis has gone swimmingly. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying or deluded.

9. Keep Learning

Keep your finger on the pulse of the job you really want. Find out what key skills, competencies and knowledge are most sought after. Connect with people who are already in the roles you want.

In my case, I kept myself connected to the profession I’m trained in.

Ethically, I have to accumulate a number of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points within a cycle, despite my current status as ‘non-practising’. Aside from staying compliant with my professional regulator, participating in CPD activities while on a forced hiatus was a way of keeping abreast with developments in my profession. I needed to feel that, despite not being a working practitioner, that I was still part of it.

I signed up to my local representative body, opting to receive emails and newsletters that would keep me up-to-date on important conversations taking place in the professional community. Because my In-Between Job is part-time, I used the extra hours to build up an online CPD portfolio. I completed online courses, attended webinars and read journal articles, all of which I recorded in the portfolio. Doing this kind of independent learning helped me identify potential areas of interest and narrow these down to specialties within a very broad profession.

My In-Between Job has also provided me with some additional training opportunities. I’ve completed several online certificates on practical subjects such as hygiene and good safety, data protection and child protection.

10. Make Connections

Any work experience can yield valuable networking opportunities. It’s important to be on good terms with your colleagues. Try not to let on that you’re feeling frustrated or that you feel the job is beneath you. Your frustrations are best communicated in a one-to-one with a supervisor. You never know how effective networking in your In-Between Job might benefit you in future endeavours. These may prove invaluable as you plot and navigate your Dream Track (more on that further down).

To make connections relevant my profession, I contacted a local organization that interested me and signed up to volunteer at their service on weekends. This way, I positioned myself closer to more experienced people in my profession, developed an understanding of the frameworks they used to guide their practice and gained valuable exposure to the context.

11. Examine Your Prejudices

The word ‘underemployed’ has always left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. To be honest, it’s a term I never, ever wanted to associate with myself.

An underemployed person is someone who, despite being skilled, works in a low-skill or low-paying job. They may work part-time, but would prefer to work full-time if given the choice. Most definitions of underemployment refer to it as measure of how well-utilised a worker is, measured in terms of time (i.e. how many hours a worker is active).

My understanding of underemployment has always had more to do with the skill level in relation to the job demands. The phenomenon of an overeducated and underemployed workforce is not a new one (see here and, more recently, here). Many workers certainly don’t need as high a level of education to do their jobs successfully. I certainly don’t.

In-Between Jobs may feel static, more like maintenance roles than positions where growth and positive change are possible. While some of your skills and knowledge may be transferable at a very basic level, the In-Between Job likely doesn’t carry demands that are challenging enough for the worker to experience a state of flow. This is why many In-Betweeners feel they’re not growing in the way they want to be.

Where I come from, work carries significant social status implications, arguably far more so than in the country where I live now.

My home country has sky-high unemployment rates. If you’re fortunate to have a job — especially a skilled one that requires a college education), you occupy a certain position in society. A job isn’t just a job — it’s a marker of a value and status. If you’re university-educated and fail to find a skilled white collar position with growth potential, you’ll experience inevitable stigma. This level of stigma, I find, is nowhere near as pronounced in my new country, where a job is a job and seemingly commands a certain degree of respect, no matter its nature or complexity.

There are unabashed work-related expectations attached to having a university education where I come from. As a middle-class graduate in my home country, you wouldn’t be caught dead as a cashier, manual laborer or taxi driver. Unless you worked a student job as a sales assistant or au pair, occupying a lower-paid position for which you’re absurdly overqualified carries a shadow of unspoken shame. Remaining in such positions, you’ll soon find yourself radically differentiated from your white-collar peers with whom you graduated. Instead of chalking it down to ‘any job has dignity’ and leaving it at that, people will wonder what went wrong.

I carried these prejudices deep into my career limbo period. I judged myself harshly for not working and achieving in the profession in which I was formally trained. I engaged in a lot of negative self-talk. It’s taken a lot of perspective-seeking and reflective work to see past the deeply-held prejudices that have too often governed my thoughts. I still need to return to that ugly place and re-examine them from time to time.

12. Plot Your Dream Track

Plot an ideal roadmap for yourself, the way out of your In-Between Job that leads to better, greater things. Things likely won’t go exactly as you envisioned, but I didn’t need to tell you that. Your Dream Track may diverge or meander. That’s okay. You already know how to deal with uncertainty.

A graceful exit from your In-Between Job will set you up for a smoother ride on the Dream Track. It may be long-anticipated, as is the case with mine, which is temporary contract with a finite end. You may have to initiate your own departure. Make sure you do this without burning bridges. Give your notice within a reasonable time period. You don't need to explain in detail why you’re leaving, but you can leave your seniors and colleagues with a vivid impression of how you truly made the most of your role. Realistically speaking, your time in the role has run its course. Yet, you’ve made a maximum impact during your tenure and left the role better than it was before. Move on gracefully. Hand over important learnings and advice for your successor. This may be their In-Between Job, too.

Now, shift your focus to the Dream Track. Identify organizations you’d like to work for. While keeping a lookout for vacancies, familiarize yourself with what their ethos and mission, the types of people they hire and the skillsets they’re looking for. You might have your sights set on independent practice or entrepreneurship. In this case, identify opportunities in the market for your service or product. Use LinkedIn to connect with key people at organizations you’re interested in. Page through your progress journal to identify unique assets you possess or skills you’ve gained from your In-Between Job that might help you carve out a niche in the market.

Remember that no experience is a wasted one.

13. Practice Self Care

Self care, self care. A recurring buzz term in the last few years. Frankly, I’m getting a little tired of it.

But here’s the thing.

Career limbo can have devastating effects on self-esteem, confidence and intrinsic motivation. The modern world places massive emphasis on the kind of paid work we do. We’re taught to measure ourselves in terms of our positions, titles and performance in work.

Work is dangerously tied up in self-worth, social status, self esteem and basic survival. It’s a mental health precipice. For something that we have so little control over, attaching so much of our self-worth to work makes little sense. It puts us all, at any given time, at risk of alienation, chronic self-doubt, anxiety and depression should we suddenly lose that which scaffolds our self-concept.

Absolute job loss, or loss of job satisfaction, is an erosion of personhood. It’s no wonder unemployment has such a high correlation with mental health difficulties. Underemployment too, in terms of hours spent in the condition of underemployment, is associated with mental health decline.

Being underemployed in an In-Between Job in 2020 was better for my mental health than being unemployed. I took that decision in the interest of self-preservation, though perhaps I didn’t know it at the time. Caring for yourself while in career limbo is the key to a healthy exit. There’s no point in trash-talking yourself. Undermining your self-worth through negative, circular thinking will only set you up for further dejection and cloud your vision of a more satisfying future. Self-care need not be elaborate, costly or fashionable. It simply needs to comprise of personal practices that nourish, rejuvenate and ground your psyche.

Make sure to acknowledge your achievements at work, however small.

Check in with your mental state daily. There may be thoughts and feelings buried in there that need some attention.

Hear the negative self-talk but don’t listen to it. Speak over it with words that are lift you out of that self-critical brainfog.

Do things that rejuvenate and inspire you. You know what these are.

Take pride in what you do — all work has dignity.

As the pandemic has progressed in ways none of us could have anticipated, I’ve come to realize that I’m fortunate to have a part-time job to go to every day, a small sense of purpose in a growingly chaotic world. Being able to work during a time of mass employment and furloughing has protected me from what could’ve been a far worse psychological outcome. There will be better days. For now, I’m making sure that my In-Between Job serves me and my future plans as best it can.