Creating a Crash-proof Career

Can there really be a Crash-proof career? Well, not literally, but we can surely build our career identities and portfolio of skills formidable enough to withstand most crashes with far greater ease than most of our colleagues. So, in reality we can build a crash proof career as far as survival is concerned. And in today's world survival means success.

The key to building a crash-proof career is building what is termed as career resilience by career coaches. So what is career-resilience? In short, it is your capacity to adjust and adapt to a changing work environment.

Career resilience depends upon sense of control, independent decision-making abilities, ability to evaluate events, ability to respond quickly, and ability to take risks, and of course, your confidence in yourself. You need to focus on, nurse, and build-up all of those faculties if you want to create a real crash-proof career. The secret lies in using career resilience to crush career barriers.



The general causes that signal an impending career crash include:

• Lack of career opportunities
• Change in technology
• Change in business climate
• Reaching the career ceiling early

Specific situations that can lead to a career crash include:

• Impractical job demands leading to excessive job stress
• Lack of proper supervision leading to demotion
• Change in organizational structure and denial of tenure
• Failure in business
• Multi-tasking extended to multi-roles that conflict with each other
• Undefined future causing uncertainty usually stemming from being passed over for promotion
• Peer disapproval
• Lack of access to information
• Relocation of workspace leading to job transfer
• Policing of employees by dumb managers and whistle-blowing

So, you need to sit down and think are these all? It is true that these are the common reasons that signal or lead to a career crash, but the question is how can they be handled. To find the answer you have to reassess yourself and find out how many of these situations are caused by yourself. What are your personal drawbacks or problems seen from your own perspective. When you are not judging others or the organization, but yourself, then you will find that the most common causes that lead to a career crash include:

• Low motivation
• Your desire for a different lifestyle
• Your lack of self-confidence
• Your inability to take strong decisions
• Inadequate experience/training to fit your job role
• Overqualification
• Late-life career transition

These are the most common personal causes that lead towards certain situations including

• Job mismatch
• Disaffection with your job or career
• Unfair treatment
• Status-dependent complexes between peers

So, if you really want to build a crash proof career, you need to understand first that you are not simply dealing with objective events but with situations that are actually stopping or destroying your career growth and endangering your survival either in the long or short run. It is common to see people devastated by job losses, while it is also common to see people take job losses as a normal part of their career growth and continue to grow by accessing better opportunities.

You can deal with barriers and develop sufficient career resilience only when you are able to give up established notions about careers and approach your career from new angles. While career identity and career insights come with far less effort, tailoring your skills to an ever-changing environment by building a wide portfolio of skills and enhancing your personal qualities is a job in itself. But if you are able to do that methodically, then your career would be resilient enough to be truly crash-proof.

Source: London, Manuel. Career Barriers: How People Experience, Overcome, and Avoid Failure. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998.