The Individual's Role: Career Managing

The dictionary definition of "career" is "the course one's life takes in pursuit of a particular interest." A personal poll of about a dozen employees brought me these typical responses:

For the most part, it's working hard and being in the right place at the right time.

Mostly luck . . . but you have to be ready if it comes your way. You have to know what fields are going to open up and get into them early. I guess it's who you know, but even then you can't be a complete dud. A certain person was the biggest factor in my life.



Boy, there are so many things that can go wrong, I sometimes wonder how I've gotten as far as I have.

All these answers seem to imply that an individual has some control over what he knows and can do and over how hard he works. But they also seem to suggest that most people feel at the mercy of chance and pretty dependent on the help of others to get them into scoring position. No one denies the existence of luck. And no one can be professionally successful, in the generally accepted sense of the term, totally on his own. Even the artist needs a gallery to display his works, publicity to tell others about it, and, on a still more fundamental level, a supplier of paints, brushes, and other equipment to enable him to function. But to a far greater degree than most people recognize, careers can be managed, though this requires more attention, self-study, professional advice, and objective analysis than most managers or employees have given the matter so far.

Steps in Career Management

The notion that managing a career means controlling everything that happens must be abandoned. When we talk about managing an estate or managing a business, we recognize that many variables are out of control. What we do, however, is to establish a plan that appears reasonable in the light of current trends, implement it, form the relationships necessary to obtain needed contributions from others, watch progress carefully, keep an eye on external events, and recycle the plan periodically to keep it realistic and current. This process, successful in every other kind of management, can add substantially to success in achieving personal career goals. Let's examine several of these steps to understand their meaning for career management.

Establishing a Career Plan

For most individuals, a career plan consists of the intention to become a doctor, or to run a small business, or to be an engineer. In business, the equivalent of this would be, "We plan to make a profit." And just as the latter is totally inadequate to insure a successful business, so for the individual the general intention does little to achieve the desired result. If the plan is really to contribute to career success, it needs to be much more specific in describing the objective and in delineating a strategy for reaching it.

The preflight procedure performed by pilot and crew provides an interesting analogy. Even before a routine 200-mile flight, they have a checklist of items to inspect and must find them acceptable before takeoff is permitted. Why, then, on a unique mission such as the launching of a career, do most individuals give so little systematic attention to essential items that may make the difference between success and failure? The accompanying box provides a minimal checklist for self-examination. If the answers to these questions are yes, an individual must then make three decisions: What vocational path will he choose to begin with? What investment of time, effort, and money is required to be successful in it? Which general strategy will he follow to get into it and be successful in it? These decisions must be made in specific terms so that they truly guide the person's activities on the career front. Since they interrelate, none is made in isolation.

Career-launching Checklist

1. Do I know the things I do best?
   
   
2. Have I found some things I like to do very much?
   
   
3. Do I work better by myself or with other people? What sorts of other people?
   
   
4. Do I know what talents I do not have?
   
   
5. Do I know the things I very much dislike doing?
   
   
6. Have I gotten professional advice on the fields of work I ought to consider for myself?
   
   
7. Does my education prepare me for these fields, or do I need further education or specialization courses or some sort of internship before making a full-fledged beginning?
   
   
8. How hard am I willing to work physically and mentally? Can I work long hours?
   
   
9. What are my work habits? Short bursts of very intense effort? Or a steady pace?
   
   
10. Have I talked with people doing jobs I think I might or should be interested in so that I have first-hand information on what they do, how they do it, and what a typical day is like for them?
    

For example, consider the case of John X. He has reached his fourth year of college with a mechanical engineering major. He has already learned through discussions with his professors that he is not an ingenious designer or gadgeteer. His math, while adequate, is not a great strength. He depends on other people and urgent problems to arouse his interest and challenge his competitive spirit. He talks to as many mechanical engineers as he can to find out what different kinds of work are open to someone with training in mechanical engineering. With the additional help of the college placement director, he rules out research, development, and design because of his mathematical weakness, his lack of ingenuity, and his need for people and short-term problem stimulus. On the basis of all these discussions, he lists consulting engineering, application engineering, shop or production engineering, and sales engineering as possibilities.

When our hypothetical engineer considers how much time and effort he is willing to invest, he decides that consulting engineering would take more time away from home and longer hours than he is willing to give right now. Further, consulting work would involve the development of specialties that could mean a number of years of hard work and quite possibly specialized courses as well. He is unwilling to make these investments at this time. Applications, sales, and production engineering appear to be reasonable choices.

As for skills, all three areas would require John to have some design experience to become thoroughly familiar with the product. Since his design talents are not strong, he feels he will probably be successful only if the product is relatively simple. On the other hand, it must be sufficiently complex that applications work will be important and that the shop will have problems requiring engineering attention. The size of the firm is important, too. It must be large enough to have an engineering organization with engineering specialties.

John then considers the jobs toward which these specialties are likely to lead. He talks to two personnel directors and learns that applications work usually leads to sales and then to sales management. Shop engineering, on the other hand, probably develops into manufacturing management. With this information in mind, he talks to as many people as possible in both kinds of work. He learns that manufacturing is likely to involve long hours (which he doesn't want) and much pressure because of relatively short-term emergencies (which he likes). Sales management has more freedom (which he likes) but probably involves extended work days (which don't appeal to him) with quite a bit of social pressure (which he doesn't like). Weighing all the factors and recognizing he cannot have everything he wants, he concludes that he will probably do better in production or shop engineering and enjoy it more and that he can hope it will lead him into manufacturing management. Acting on this decision, he develops plans for finding the initial position.