Stephanie Kramer was just a few years into her career when she joined one of her dream companies. In 2007, she joined L’Oréal to manage global marketing efforts for Ralph Lauren’s fragrance division.
In the nearly 20 years since then, Kramer, 43, has worked on iconic fragrance and skin care brands at L’Oréal, then at Chanel, before returning to L’Oréal in a recent career move to become chief human resources officer for the company’s North American operations.
She says some of the best career advice she ever got came from her former boss, Chanel CEO Maureen Schiquet, who gave her a framework of three questions to determine if she was ready for a new job or career change.
“I often ask people three questions when deciding on a career,” Kramer tells CNBC Make It.
What do you want to learn or teach? Where do you get your energy from? What do you need in your life right now?
Kramer was working as a global marketing director at L’Oréal in 2011, had just completed her master’s degree at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and was interested in taking her career in a new direction when the opportunity to work at Chanel arose.
Kramer said she was drawn to how it represented something different: private companies, luxury brands and companies with categories beyond beauty.
“That was a learning curve,” Kramer says. Meanwhile, having worked in the fragrance business for Ralph Lauren, she felt she could apply that knowledge to Chanel fragrances such as Chanel No. 5 and Coco Mademoiselle. She says this has given her something to teach while taking on her new role.
As for what energized her, Kramer said she was eager to try something she had never done before, new colleagues, and a different environment.
Finally, Kramer says she had to reevaluate her personal life. At the time, she had just graduated from her master’s program and was planning to get married. “And I think in big life moments like that, you also think about how you want to grow professionally,” she says.
Kramer recommends using this framework when searching for a new job and narrowing down the opportunities you want to pursue. She also says that in combination with the “traffic light” method, it can be used to evaluate jobs already held.
“When you feel stuck or hit a ‘red flag,’ ask these questions to clear your mind and help you get unstuck with a better understanding of what you want,” she says.
If changing jobs means returning to your old company
Kramer spent nearly five years at Chanel, first as director of fragrance marketing and then as executive director of skin care marketing.
In 2016, she says she had another moment where she wanted something different and reconsidered her three questions approach.
Upon returning to L’Oréal, a new position opened up, giving Kramer the chance to return to the global business. It’s something I missed when I quit to work at Chanel.
This was an opportunity for Kiehl’s to collaborate with a new market leading in global marketing.
“I got to work a lot with travel retail teams in Korea, China, and Asia,” says Kramer. “So there was a huge acceleration at Kiehl’s that I ended up joining that allowed me to expand and get closer to consumers in a different way. I loved it.”
And on a personal level, Kramer says it was a good time to return to a former employer he loved. She had just given birth to her first son and was ready to do something different professionally, but it was a company where she felt supported.
“At L’Oréal, I was able to go in a completely different direction,” Kramer says of her move into human resources. “This was also amazing and actually happened after my second son was born.”
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