Your brilliant career

Last week, in the first of these articles, I addressed the broad issues of current interest in the field of personal career management.

I also began to explore topics which will help people – both in their individual and corporate capacities – focus on specific concerns and challenges facing employees today.

In this week’s article I analyse people’s response to concerns they have identified, and what causes people to fail in their careers.

What are people doing about the main career concerns that were discussed in last week’s article, such as job insecurity and the impact of technology?

They seem to be doing very little. This is for several reasons:

People are programmed from their earliest years – from their school, from their parents, subsequently from their employer – to do the job they have been set and to look narrowly at the outcome of that job and very little else. So people concentrate on: their job; who they are accountable to; and who they are responsible for.

Very little time, therefore, is spent addressing or thinking about the career implications of the tasks they undertake, both in terms of the experience they are gaining and the effect this experience has on their career development.

People perceive career development to be beyond their influence. They assume that macro-economic factors, which are not susceptible to personal action, are the determining factors in their lives.

To a limited extent this is true, but people can take control of their own lives and their own careers much more than they currently believe.

The people who make the effort to do so will have relatively fewer problems in re-positioning or marketing themselves to achieve career success.

People live in a dream world. They have a common misconception that they will hold on to their job or there will be promotion if they do a good job. Alternatively they assume that if they do not think about it too much the worst may not happen. There is no evidence to support either of these views. They offer a very flimsy basis on which to plan your life – in reality, a false sense of security.

What do people fail at, specifically, in their own careers which will increase the chance of the job insecurity they fear becoming a reality?

There are ten reasons why people fail in their careers. They do not:

have or develop winning attitudes such as high self-esteem and do not commit to high-achieving actions such as self-discipline.

put their goals in writing, so they do not know what they are aiming for and they cannot recognise therefore when they have achieved anything worthwhile.

understand how skills are acquired, applied and transmitted to others, so they have no plans or techniques in place to acquire and apply skills more effectively.

understand the ways in which they are assessed formally and, more importantly, informally, so they cannot amend their behaviour and attitudes so as to ensure they are more favourably assessed and perceived.

appreciate the relevance of their current job experience either to their personal learning style or to future job prospects. As a result they do not analyse whether or not the experience they are obtaining is appropriate or relevant.

understand or fully participate in feedback or performance appraisal, so their motivation and self-esteem, as well as their effectiveness, is much less than it otherwise would be.

know where to get sound, objective, inexpensive information to address these issues. This means that they cannot proactively tackle issues of concern in a disciplined and meaningful way. They can only react to events in an undisciplined and unmeaningful fashion.

know techniques which will ensure they apply career development information in a systematic way, as a result whatever information which is obtained has a limited value

know how to draw or implement conclusions from their efforts. Even if they were able to apply some career development techniques, the ultimate objective of control over their career would still be inadequate because the techniques are probably untried or inappropriate.

understand the crucial importance of a personal commitment to self-reliance in all of the above to advance their career, according to their needs and obligations.

Why do people not address these areas of failure in their careers?

Even when people have been made aware of what causes career failure they do not possess the insight or training to analyse these causes systematically.

They are quite successful at planning and analysing other aspects of their lives – their summer holidays, their children’s education, or their own work, but because they have not been taught how to analyse career issues, they are very unlikely to be in control of their career development.

The overwhelming impact of people’s day-to-day workload, travelling, family commitments and general pressures does not give people the chance to step back and look, in an objective way, at their career development specifically, and their lives in general.

People are inclined to take the easy and comfortable route, at great cost to themselves by plodding on in the hope that somebody will recognise their skills or their contribution.

Key questions

At the end of last week’s article it was mentioned that ‘Key Questions’ would be included in the future, in order to help you develop your career.

The questions relating to this week’s article are:

Q1. How much time have you spent in reading and researching your career development in an analytical way?

Q2. What aspects of your career to date are you most proud about, or least proud about?

Q3. Do you feel this analysis is difficult to carry out?

Q4. In what aspect of your career do you feel you would achieve most if you concentrated your effort on it?

Q5. Where would you find sources for that learning?

Q6. Would you find it inside or outside your own organisation?

Q7. Would you find it through extra studying or through practical experience?

These are only the first of many questions and are not designed for off-the-cuff answers. As you begin slowly to reflect on these issues, you will obtain maximum benefit from future articles.