More execs quit jobs to decide what’s next

It’s becoming more common, and more acceptable, for executives to take some time off to re-evaluate their lives. After more than 25 years in public relations, working many 80-hour weeks, Mary Trudel craved a complete rest from her job. In March last year, she quit her senior management post at the Hill & Knowlton agency with no idea what she would do next.

She focused on long-buried interests, traveling to Belize and Guatemala. She became more involved with her church. She took Spanish lessons, joined a book club, went to the theater and the ballet, attended lectures and started working out regularly. Sometimes, she woke up early to watch the birds in New York’s Central Park, followed by a docent tour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

”It was thrilling to have the time and a seizing-the-moment opportunity,” she says.

A generation ago, few people voluntarily quit a job midway through their careers to create some personal leisure time for themselves, no matter how unhappy they were. They made sure they had a new job to jump to before leaving a prior one. The belief was if you were out of work, even by choice, you would be deemed damaged goods by prospective employers.

Today, it’s becoming more common and more acceptable for executives to take some time off. For one thing, executive careers are not as linear as they once were. Waves of corporate restructuring have created far more churn within workforces, and burnout is rife.

RECENT SUCCESSES

Also making it more acceptable are the high-profile executives who have taken time off in recent years and later gone on to coveted posts with a new employer. Brenda Barnes, for example, took a top-executive job at Sara Lee last year after voluntarily leaving PepsiCo about six years earlier. And Ann Fudge, who left Kraft Foods for a break and, after a two-year hiatus, took the helm of ad firm WPP Group PLC’s Young & Rubicam Brands.

Taking a career break ”is no longer considered a showstopper,” says Kelvin Thompson, a senior partner at search firm Heidrick & Struggles. “There’s still a stigma associated with it in some areas, but I think that stigma is more envy sometimes nowadays.”

Still, an extended break is a gamble that can backfire without careful planning. At the very least it requires enough of a financial cushion to go without a paycheck for a while. Even those who can afford this must recognize it may take them longer than they anticipated to find a new job after a break. They’ll have to cope with uncertainty and the loss of identity that not having a job sometimes triggers, and be prepared to explain the time gap to potential future employers.

Trudel, a widow in her early 50s, had enough money saved to last about a year without a salary. But she didn’t completely unplug from the business world. She did some consulting and a lot of networking. Over the course of about six months, she talked to about 150 people about what kinds of jobs she might find more satisfying. With so many years in business, she had a hefty Rolodex of former colleagues, and they in turn led her to new contacts.

Her leisure activities made her realize how much she missed the arts. So when she heard from a recruiter about a temporary public-relations assignment at New York’s Wallace Foundation, which supports cultural and educational programs, she was intrigued enough to try it, even though it would require a drop in pay.

When the assignment ended, she landed a permanent position. She’s making about 40 percent less than in her prior job, but she is able and willing to take that cut because she is far more engaged.

TIME TO SEARCH

Others who have been dissatisfied, but too consumed by their jobs to figure out what they want to do next, use breaks to do a thorough job search. That was the case for John Baackes, who as a senior vice president of a large nonprofit health plan felt frustrated and pigeonholed by his company’s management hierarchy. He quit in January to figure out his next career move without the distractions of a daily job. ”I couldn’t have gone through this process if I was still working full-time,” he says.

He hired an executive coach, Gail Blanke of New York, to help him analyze what he disliked about his old job, and took time to relax. He started building a pond in his backyard, took pottery classes and took up tai chi.

It helped that Baackes was known among healthcare industry recruiters. Shortly into his break, he heard about a job that fit his criteria. A start-up called Senior Whole Health, a health plan for people who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid, needed a chief executive officer. The board wanted to know why he was out of work. Baackes said frankly that he had quit because he just wasn’t satisfied. The answer apparently satisfied them. He started as CEO in May.

STILL UNDECIDED

Breaks don’t always lead to such easy landings, however. One 48-year-old New Yorker left a senior management job at a big investment bank in 2002 after two close friends died. He wanted to re-evaluate the direction of his own life.

Since then, he has pursued a host of different projects, including helping to produce a film and researching the interactive educational games market. He needs a job soon but still doesn’t know exactly what to look for. ”It’s harder to change into a new career, and it’s harder to come back,” he says.

Even shorter breaks from work can trigger feelings of aimlessness. After co-founding a technology company, selling it in the late 1990s, and then working to integrate the firm into its new parent, John Funge was exhausted. In the middle of 2000, the now 33-year-old quit without any plan — except to rest.

But after a few months, he felt uncomfortable telling people at parties that he didn’t have a job and grew wistful watching people rush to work. ”You start to feel like more of a spectator than a participant in day-to-day life,” he says.

After about six months, Funge decided to apply to MBA programs and look for a new job. By the fall of 2001, he had landed a job at a consulting firm Sapient. Then he enrolled at Insead, the French business school, completing a degree in 2003.

Now Funge is starting another technology company with a partner. He says his break helped him realize how much he enjoys business, but if he ever takes another break, he will have a clearer plan before leaping.

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