The 4 Categories of Career Articles

Career-related articles usually fall into one or more of the following categories:

1. Comforting [Everything will be OK]

2. Warning [Do this now, or else!]

3. Avoiding [Your disappointment will soon pass]

4. Resolving [Useful insight on personal career success]

Excellent career articles are written every day. The next time you are reading one, see if its core message fits with any of the four categories above. As you are reading, you might also ask yourself how helpful the advice and scenarios are. Numerous articles separate individual issues from career management activity*.

This blog is for and about people looking to resolve career issues and define their own personal success over time. Articles on this blog argue the case for active, rigourous career management in pursuit of personal career success.

If any of the above is interesting to you, please visit us again. You might even wish to share an opinion or contribute a story. This is Web2.0 after all :)

Best Regards

Paul

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[*Career Management should always be present as it provides the context for decision-making and issue resolution. When it is missing, what may seem like a win can have a negative impact in the future. Advice on answering interview questions is a good example of this. Without a wider career management context you might pass the interview but how do you know you are interviewing for the right job? See these posts on this tricky interview question as an example, What would you like to be doing 5 years from now?, What would you like to be doing 5 years from now? - Revisited]

Oliver's story: Internal promotion

This is Oliver's description of managing a recent career development opportunity, told briefly in his own words: "I worked in the operations team but always wanted to work on the investment side. With help I was able to leverage my experience and gain the relevant experience without the title, to the point that I have now secured a role on the investment team."

So, what did Oliver do from a career management perspective? First, he objectified his intention to move from a support role to his employer's core business function. Once this goal was established, Oliver could interpret and manage situations for their ability to help him achieve this aim. This meant that when he was asked to take on additional workload and responsibility in a crisis, it was easier for him to see it as a proving ground for his talents. If he performed well it would be another qualifying step towards his goal of internal promotion.

Looking back on these events, on the subject of careers advice Oliver said: "I have used career services before and have generally been disappointed. I found that traditionally, such advice is focused purely on how to progress externally so it offered little help in my situation."

Oliver's experiences also prove how close opportunities for internal development can be. He was already in a position of trust within his employer's business. Demonstrating that he could be relied upon when the company needed him most confirmed his greater potential within the business and gave his managers the opportunity they needed to realise this too.

Prepare for the worst (Question that is..)

I've spent most of today preparing for an upcoming meeting. Making sure I have done my homework. Trying to anticipate the kind of questions I am likely to be asked. Looking for the unexpected holes that the other person always seems so skilled at finding.

The whole process has reminded me of preparing for an interview. So it seemed appropriate to post a few thoughts on preparation or readiness. As always, these thoughts aren't so much my own as they are a collection of the best advice and best practice I am lucky enough to have encountered over my career in live interview and assessment.

The best advice I have encountered on the subject of preparing for a big interview is knowing the outcome you are working towards and why you want to achieve it. There are snappier lines but for one reason or another, this is the one that has stayed with me.

When everything else is removed, the components that remain are you, the person(s) you are meeting and what each of you would like the encounter to achieve. Yes, it is important to know what the other side wants but turning up to an interview just to please the interviewer is rarely a winning strategy on its own. At some point, your interests have to be aired and justified too.

If you are asked, 'Why are you here today?' or 'What would you like this meeting to achieve?' or an old interview favourite like 'What would you like to be doing 5 years from now? ...', if your preparation on the above is clear, your answer will be clear too.

Good luck to anyone preparing their answer at this moment in time!

The value of career conversations - Update!

New evidence continues to suggest that companies are realising the benefits of their involvement in the career conversation and how it can deliver value to employer and employee. This recent article from Personnel Today (Retention improved by talent management for seniors) is a great follow up to the post on this blog a few days earlier (KEEP Consulting: The value of career conversations...)

In this employer's example, focusing on the career conversation and clarifying the "goals and ambitions" of senior staff has meant, "they're motivated to join in with new opportunities, more productive, more likely to stay, and we get a bigger contribution from them."

Being critical of this article for a moment, it is written more for the employer than the employee but the positives described above do appear to be derived from the greater sense of purpose and reward experienced by individual employees following a conversation that targets their personal success.

Try not to be too put off by the fact that senior management are the immediate beneficiaries either. With the benefits a programme like this can deliver, it won't be too long for staff at other levels to be included.

What a pleasant change to read a positive headline too!

Career planning: Handle with care

In his best-selling book Blink, the author, columnist and occasional blogger Malcolm Gladwell (gladwell.com), makes a strong case for decision making that leaves room for understanding in the moment. The cues that we take both consciously and sub-consciously from a situation are as valid as any pre-conceived intention or conditioning, in some cases more so. In other words, any plan or conditioning with little or no room for 'live' action and reaction can hinder rather than help.

For the same reasons, a successful career plan should not limit opportunities by being too prescriptive. It does need to answer questions convincingly on the subject of where we are heading and why but it should also be flexible enough to take into account the opportunities we encounter, need to process and manage every day.

Adopting the habits of successful people will get you so far but only so far as they apply to the situations you are in, or how much you agree with the role model you have chosen. A much stronger case presents itself for a career plan based around the core components of each individual's relationship with work. Only a plan that has been individually authored in this way has the ability to define a meaningful direction for the future and allow the freedom to act and interact in the moment.

I hope Mr Gladwell would approve.

Making progress

"If I have done my homework* all I need to do is get myself into situations where people are asking me questions†. Whatever happens from there I make progress‡."

* In the context of work/life fusion, your homework is understanding your values, talents and goals.

† The people asking you questions can range from your current boss to an interview panel. They could just as easily be your spouse or other family members and friends. You can also question yourself.

‡ As for making progress, if you don't get the promotion or the new job, be sure to ask why! If you are not happy with the direction that your career is going in, work/life fusion will help you make progress. If you do get promoted and if you are moving towards personal success, I would argue that you have made worthwhile progress indeed!

Context

As discussed in recent posts the definition of personal success incorporates more than just success at work. This is chiefly because career planning from the perspective of work alone can lead to unsatisfactory outcomes.

If you have ever started a job convinced that it was right for you but ended up hating it, you will need little more convincing that there is more to effective career planning than first meets the eye.

Exploring your values, talents and goals in the broader context of work and life creates the opportunity to aim for a more meaningful version of success.

If you have already considered the three initial questions -- What is important to me? What am I good at? and What keeps me going? -- revisit your answers in the broader context of work and life and compare the results. If you would like to follow up here on the blog please leave a comment with your findings or questions.

Have a great weekend!

Goals and planning

A recent conversation provoked the following thought: You don't need a career plan to be successful but in order to achieve personal success you do need goals.

I'm inclined to agree because goals can be the milestones that remind us we are heading in the right direction. They also give us a good excuse to celebrate success. As a result goals form a key part of our motivation. They help directly to keep us going.

Immediate goals can be clear and well defined but as we look into the future the variables increase and it is arguable that highly-defined, fixed objectives contain as much risk as reward. One reason to support this? Although they can be motivational and achievable; fixed, long-term objectives definitely can't be guaranteed.

Because this is clearly a subject too complex to resolve in one post and maybe even too complex to find a definitive answer for, I'll end with this point. A fixed objective is not essential to personal success but an idea of direction is. An open interpretation of what your values, talents and goals might lead to is an exciting prospect for the future because it allows newly gained knowledge and experience to contribute as well.

That's enough from me but there's a lot more to be said. What do you think?