How to Take a Step-down Job--And Still Win

Until January, Kathy Kohler, 49, earned a salary and bonus in the high six figures, managed a global team and over-saw a significant budget in her role as the head of marketing and communications at Lazard Asset Management, a New York City-based financial firm. Then she was laid off.

Now Kohler, a married mother of two, is in triage mode. "I'm worried about paying for retirement and sending my kids to college," she says. Kohler has wasted no time reaching out to her network, but she has found few opportunities at her level. "I sent in my resume for a job that pays half my last salary," Kohler says, "and they didn't even call."

Thanks to the economy, Kohler and many other successful women are faced with a question they never thought they'd have to answer at this stage: How low can you go and still end up on a worthwhile rung of the career ladder? Experts and job seekers alike agree there's a difference between getting stuck and stepping back. "You have to let go of the idea that your career will always be on an upward slope," says Promise Phelon, founder of Upwardly Mobile (upmo.com), an online career management service. "The trick is to ride the career ups and downs and still land in a great place." Here's how to turn a retreat into a smart, strategic move.

WIN STRATEGY #1: Land the step-down job

Ironically, being overqualified for a position often makes it harder, not easier, to get hired: Employers worry that senior-level candidates will bolt as soon as something better comes along. "We're now having employers say they won't look at candidates with more than X years of experience, which we've never seen before," says Kathryn Sollmann, cofounder of the Women@Work Network. You must convince the employer that you sincerely want the job, which means that if you're feeling financial pressure, you can't let it show.

Begin by emphasizing motivations that aren't related to the recession. "If you're ready for a lifestyle shift and want to stop working 80 hours a week, make sure that's clear," Sollmann says. You can also play up your excitement about getting back to basics after spending so much time as senior management. "Emphasize that you miss the hands-on work with clients, which is what you loved in the first place," says Amelia Warren Tyagi, a founder of Business Talent Group and coauthor of All Your Worth. And, gently, make it clear that you're a bargain. "My sales pitch is to say, 'Look, you're getting a great value,'?" Kohler says. "?'Then when the market rebounds, I'll be ready to move into a bigger role in the firm.'?"

WIN STRATEGY #2: Use the new spot to plug any holes in your resume

The right lower-level job can catapult your career forward by allowing you to acquire crucial skills. That's the game plan of Lois Draegin, 56, of New York City, who lost her six-figure position as the managing editor of TV Guide in spring 2008 and accepted a spot at wowOwow.com as an unpaid executive intern, reporting to a 24-year-old junior editor. For six months after her layoff, Draegin hunted for a staff job without success. "I know how to manage people, and I can write," she says. But she had little online experience, which was hurting her prospects. "I met with the edi-tor-in-chief here, and she said, 'Call me crazy, but I could hire a college student and have to watch over her, or you could come write for us and learn Web skills at the same time,'?" Draegin says. "I thought, what do I have to lose?"

Which skills you choose to learn depends, of course, on where you want your career to lead. What's your endgame? Answering that question may require some hard thinking. When Phelon asked 2,500 professionals about their career goals, she found the majority didn't know what kind of job they wanted to be in two years later. "If you don't have a plan, it's really hard to make choices," Phelon says. Making some kind of long-term professional road map--even one that may need tweaking in the future--is the only way to judge how appropriate any position is for you.

WIN STRATEGY #3: Stay in the game with consulting

One form of stepping back that's popular with women is project work or freelancing, and experts agree that either can be a good short-term strategy. "Consulting helps you stay fresh and motivated, and then you have a great answer when people ask what you're doing with your time," Warren Tyagi says. But you have to accept the limitations of con-sulting and understand that in most cases it doesn't come with the prestige or financial benefits of a full-time position.

Pamela, an oncologist in New Jersey, who asked to use only her first name because she is actively job hunting, started consulting after she was laid off as chief medical officer of a biotech company in September 2008. "Consulting has lowered my professional profile," she says. "But I do enjoy working from home. I also really like that I still interact with my colleagues, travel for business and keep up-to-date." And she estimates she'll make $150,000 this year.

WIN STRATEGY #4: Take full advantage of the lifestyle perks

When you're climbing the ladder, you learn not to talk (or think) about work-life balance. But it can be one of the pleasant surprises of taking a step-down job. That has been the case for Mandy Kimmer, 48, of Winter Garden, Florida, who was laid off as director of PR for a Tampa resort when a new general manager came in with a team of his own. The layoff was standard operating procedure for the industry but a blow to Kimmer, a single mother.

Since few PR opportunities were available in Tampa, Kimmer moved with her two children to Orlando for its more promising job market. In November 2007, after four months of looking, she found full-time work as a marketing and public relations coordinator for Orange County Parks and Recreation. "I'm earning 20 percent less and my kids are going to have to get scholarships to pay for college," she says. "But I love the other perks, like the fact that my commute is under 30 minutes, I have wonderful colleagues, and I get to work in a park."

WIN STRATEGY #5: Spring back up when the timing is right

And when you're ready--when the economy rebounds or your ambition does--you can turn your job into a real opportunity. After Helene Rutledge, 46, of New York City, was laid off from her position as director of global clinical supplies at Pfizer in 2006, she ended up as a vice president at Go Smile, a small company that makes teeth-whitening products. "It felt like a huge risk," she says. "I'd never worked at a start-up; I'd always been a big corporation kind of person." Rumors swirled that the business would be moved to California, and Rutledge worried about her job security.

Even so, she took advantage of the company's small size by diving into every aspect of the business. "I regularly made presentations to the board and did a whole range of tasks that were considered outside my pay grade at Pfizer," she says. "It absolutely broadened my horizons." After two years, Rutledge was able to move to a much better position at GlaxoSmithKline, a major pharmaceutical company. "I'm earning more, I love the work, and there's room for growth here," she says. In April, after only two months at GSK, she was promoted. And that's the silver lining: One study found that some successful female executives whose careers are dealt a tough economic blow move up even faster than other, similarly employed women. Says study author Mary Blair-Loy, a sociologist at the University of California, San Diego, "For some people, economic turbulence can create great opportunities."

Scaling back before you've been laid off

Jill Richmond, now 41, was the market-ing director at a prestigious law firm in Syracuse, New York, until she became pregnant with her first child in 2002. She knew she wanted to keep work-ing, but she was worried about how her performance would suffer once she could no longer put in such long hours. So rather than risk losing her job (and her whole salary) later on, Richmond asked if she could move into a less stressful marketing assistant position that had just opened up. "The partner was shocked, but he understood my rea-soning and appreciated my loyalty," she says. The firm responded by up-grading the new job to assistant market-ing director, which reduced Richmond's pay cut to just over $10,000. They also asked her to help interview candidates for her old job, to ensure that the new person would be a good fit.

With rumors of layoffs at every turn, should you consider a voluntary scaleback as an act of self-preservation? Only if you're sure that you can get hired into the lower-level job--and that you'll like it. If it's an arrangement you've been considering for other reasons (such as having more time with your family), asking your boss to experiment with fewer hours for fewer dollars can be a smart move. But don't pull back so much that you make yourself seem expendable, or you could still find yourself facing the ax when your boss real-izes she can easily do without you. "And if your company is downsizing, ask yourself if staying there is really the best move for your career," Phelon advises. "Maybe there's a better job out there somewhere for you."

As for Richmond, seven years later she is still in the same position, but she has earned enough in raises to top her original salary. "I don't get the final say anymore on certain decisions," she says. "And I'm sure there will come a point where I'm ready to start climb-ing again. But it has helped that I have the institutional knowledge, so I always feel that my voice has weight here. And I have the flexibility I need."