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Article from Human Resources, Hong Kong, Jan 2007
HK HR Magazine – Jan 2007
Career Management
Why do you need to manage your career?
The world we live in has never been so challenging. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) happen regularly, and looking back the past decade or so, there has been numerous major M&As that have resulted in countless job losses. Other typical reasons for job losses include management changes, outsourcing, off-shoring and technological advancements. For now at least, job losses stemming from the need to better manage corporate costs are fewer compared to the days of the Asian financial crisis. Most businesses still rely heavily on human resources as their prime resource to keep the organization moving in the right direction (growth and profits). However, human resources have to be deployed much more effectively and salary costs are kept to as low a level as economically feasible. As a result of this, most businesses function with minimum manpower. Every dollar of salary has to add value to the business, or it should not be spent at all.
As leaders focus on adding value to both the top and bottom line, relatively less time and resources are allocated to talent development/management. In some organizations, budget allocated to talent development/management is a luxury. One could argue that such organizations are penny-wise but pound-foolish since they do rely on talent to keep the corporate machinery running smoothly. However, when push comes to shove, leaders will have to exercise much prudence in the allocation of their financial resources.
The end-result is that employees (i.e. all of us!) have to allocate their own time and financial resources to manage their careers, and keep themselves ‘employable’ – they have to continue learning, up-dating and up-grading their skills, lest they trial behind the pack and get left behind – or worse still, become another statistic in the increasing pool of the “structurally un-employable”. Self-directed career management has never been so necessary that it has become a tool for survival in the fiercely competitive and sometimes, cruel, corporate jungle.
What is involved in career management?
There are three basic activities in self-directed career management.
1) Reviewing your career interests.
All of us have a set of embedded life interests (ELI). These interests are acquired over time – experience we go through, people in our lives etc - and rarely do they change, unless something dramatic happens. As an example, post-Sept 11 2001, many Americans (and I suspect others too) were jolted out of their comfort zone and quickly realized that there was much more to life than working their butts out for their employers - such as spending more time with the ones whom they love, and who loves them.
Most of us, however, tend to have a fairly constant set of life interests. Working in a job, or being involved in activities that encompass our ELI will give us greater personal satisfaction. Working with a qualified career coach can help you identify your ELIs, so could the use of career profiling tools, such as the use of a pack of card sorts.
This simple-to-use tool (using the forced-ranking concept) allows you to better understand your career interests. It is recommended that you do a review annually, especially those who have just recently entered the working world. For those who have more than 10 years or so of working experience, it may not be necessary for you to perform this activity frequently unless you suspect that your ELIs may have shifted dramatically. One of the possible symptoms when something like that happens is when you find yourself dreading to go to work for a prolonged period of time.
2) Identifying your Key Work Values
Unlike ELIs, our key work values may change over time. When we first enter the working world, it is quite likely that financial gains, constant and on-going job challenges, variety in our jobs etc feature high on our list of key work values. As we progress in our careers, other values such as corporate power, and the ability to influence decisions and lead others can become much more important to us. It is important to be aware of our key work values as performing a job and being in a work environment that contains most of them will allow us to have a higher level of personal satisfaction.
The tools described in (1) above can also help you in identifying your key work values. It is recommended that you do this periodically e.g. once a year.
3) On-going learning and upgrading
Continuous learning is a ‘must’. In our knowledge-based economy and a world that is constantly revolving and changing, we must keep ourselves updated, relevant and possess the kind of business skills that are required for us to remain useful to business and society at large. It would be helpful if our employers pay (fully or partially) for our learning and upgrading. However, there will always be constraints – be prepared to set aside a percentage of your monthly wages to pay for your learning and upgrading. Do not see it as an ‘expense’, but rather as an ‘investment’ for your career & employability.
Where do you start?
Here’re some tips to get you started:
- Learn more about yourself as an individual. Find out your likes, dislikes, and preferences. You must know who and what you are before you can focus on discovering what your career goals are. Use psychometric tools, or consult a qualified industrial psychologist, to enable you to better understand yourself — both as an individual and a professional.
- Review your career progress. Plan to take time off to do periodic soul-searching. Put pen to paper: Where you have been, where you are now and where would you like to go. Most times it can be useful to have something in writing so we can re-visit our thoughts and where self-commitments/resolutions can be more effectively adhered to.
- Identify the motivation and reasons why you move from job A to job B, and employer A to employer B. What were the influences that shaped your decision? Was it self-initiated or brought about by others and/or circumstances?
- Perform an analysis of what activities you like most — and least — about your current job as well as previous ones, and ask yourself ‘why?’ for each.
- Identify and write down your past successes, situations that you excel in and enjoy and recognise the skills and personality attributes that enable you to succeed.
- Review your “personal life”, and how much work-life balance you really have. You need to do this because work & your career is just one aspect of your existence, much as you really love your job, you have to give some focus on your other life priorities too.
- Have your supervisors, peers and subordinates give you their feedback on what they think of you at work, your style and suggested areas for improvement.
Career options
Having done all this, you should discuss career options with your mentor or career counsellor, who should have a good understanding of the company, prevailing market conditions, what’s hot and what’s not, now and in the foreseeable future.
Finally, map out a strategy to arrive at your chosen career path and destination. If you need to fill “gaps” in your career development, plan how to meet them.
When do you start looking for another role, within or outside your current company? Here’s a simple yet effective tool that you can use – I call it simply the 1/3-rule. Break down your job into activities, slot them into one of the following three silos:-
Learning – those activities that you will learn from performing them
Stretching – those that you need to do more of to be an expert
Eyes Shut – those you are already an expert
If you have a more or less equal mix of all three categories of activities, or a relatively higher percentage in the first two categories, you have an ‘ideal’ job – so ‘stay-put’. However, if you have a substantially higher percentage in the last category i.e “eyes shut”, then staying on the job is akin to running on a treadmill – you may be running fast, hard and long, but you are not going anywhere! When you are at this stage, it is time to look for something else more challenging so you can continue to grow. If your current employer does not offer you an alternative career opportunity, fight off the strong resistance to keep the status quo – you know, the warm and comfortable feeling of “why should I move? After all, I know everyone in this company, everyone knows me, my boss and I get along fabulously well, I get to travel business class etc – look outside.
When do you stop managing your career?
The straightforward answer is ‘you never’. Universities & polytechnics should continue to provide their graduating students with career guidance as well as help them understand the need for them to manage their careers, right from day 1. For those who are contemplating slowing down and moving away from a full-time job, you still need to manage your ‘chapter 2’ career, simply because the world is still revolving!
The concept of 'retirement' must also necessarily be re-defined. Not only is
it not healthy (physically, emotionally and spiritually) to not do any
meaningful work, it may also not be financially practical for many of us.
For some, a portfolio career is a viable option.
Final words of wisdom
In addition to the strategies highlighted above, you can further manage your career, and enhance your employability by paying attention to the following top ten pointers:
Network, network, network
Be ever willing to take-on additional responsibilities
Adopt a mindset that embraces geographical mobility
Have a hearty appetite for embracing change
Be ‘visible’ and ‘audible’
Be customer focused
Be brave enough to try doing things differently
Be internet savvy
Enhance your ability to work well with people
Take a certain amount of calculated risks
Paul Heng, CMF, ACC
Founder, NeXT Career Consulting Group, Asia
Author, “Jump Start your Career”
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