MODULE 7: Career Development

• Career

  • It is a pattern of work-related experiences that span the course of a person’s life.
  • It reflects any work, paid or unpaid.
  • It is a broad definition helpful in today’s work environment where employees and organizations have diverse needs.
• Organizational Career Planning => develops career ladders, tracks careers, and provides opportunities for development.
• Individual Career Development => helps employees identify their goals and the steps to achieve them.
• Career Development => looks at the long-term career effectiveness and success of employees.
• Employee Training and Development => focuses on performance in the immediate or intermediate time frames.
• Career Development adds value to the company and it:

  1. Ensures needed talent will be available.
  2. Improves the organization's ability to attract and retain talented employees.
  3. Ensures that minorities and women get opportunities for growth and development.
  4. Reduces employee frustration.
  5. Enhances cultural diversity.
  6. Promotes organizational goodwill.
• External Career Success is measured by criteria such as: progression up the hierarchy, type of occupation, long-term commitment, and income.
• Internal Career Success is measured by the meaningfulness of one’s work and achievement of personal life goals.
• Effective Coaches give guidance through direction, advice, criticism, and suggestion in an attempt to aid the employee’s growth.
• Mentors are typically senior-level employees who support younger employees by vouching for them, answer for them in the “highest circles”, introduce them to others, and advise and guide them through the corporate system.
• DISADVANTAGES OF COACHING/MENTORING:

  • Tendency to perpetuate current styles and practices.
  • Reliance on the coach’s ability to be a good teacher.
• CONSIDERATIONS FOR ORGANIZATIONS:

  • Coaching between employees who do not have a reporting relationship.
  • Ways to effectively implement cross-gender mentoring.
• TRADITIONAL CAREER STAGES:

  1. Exploration
  2. Establishment
  3. Mid-Career
  4. Late-Career
  5. Decline
• Exploration

  • Includes school and early work experiences, such as internships.
  • Involves trying out different fields, discovering likes and dislikes, and forming attitudes toward work and social relationship patterns.
  • Least relevant to HRM because it occurs prior to employment.
• Establishment

  • Includes searching for work, getting first job, and getting evidence of “success” or “failure.
  • Takes time and energy to find a “niche” and to “make your mark".
• Mid-Career

  • Challenged to remain productive at work.
  • Employee may continue to grow, plateau (stay competent but not ambitious), and deteriorate.
• Late Career

  • Successful “elder states persons” can enjoy being respectedfor their judgment. It is also a good resource for teaching others.
  • Those who have declined may experience job insecurity
  • Plateauing is expected; life off the job increases in importance.
• Decline

  • It may be most difficult for those who were most successful at earlier stages.
  • Today’s longer life spans and legal protections for older workers open the possibility for continued work contributions, either paid or volunteer.
• Good Career Choice Outcomes => provide a positive self-concept and the opportunity to do work that we value.
• THREE MODELS THAT HELP MATCH YOUR SKILLS TO CAREERS:

  1. Holland Vocational Preferences
  2. Schein Anchors
  3. Myers Briggs Typologies
• THREE MAJOR COMPONENTS of Holland Vocational Preferences:

  1. People have varying occupational preferences
  2. If you think your work is important, you will be a more productive employee.
  3. You will have more in common with people who have similar interests.
• SIX VOCATIONAL THEMES of Holland Vocational Preferences:

  1. Realistic
  2. Artistic
  3. Investigative
  4. Social
  5. Enterprising
  6. Conventional
• Holland Vocational Preferences

  • Preferences can be matched to work environments.
  • Example: social-enterprising-conventional preference structure matches career ladder in large bureaucracy.
• Schein Anchors

  • Personal value clusters determine what is important to individuals.
  • Success of person-job match determines individual’s fit with the job.
• IMPORTANCE OF INDIVIDUALS in Schein Anchors:

  1. Technical-functional Competence
  2. Managerial Competence
  3. Security-stability
  4. Creativity
  5. Autonomy-independence
• Myers Briggs Typologies

  • Four personality dimensions - extraversion-introversion, sensing-intuitive, thinking-feeling, and judging-perceiving -- identify 16 personality types.
  • Managers find knowing personality types useful in understandinghow workers interact.
  • Job characteristics can be matched to individual preferences.
• Successful Career Tips:

  1. Know yourself
  2. Manage your reputation
  3. Network contacts
  4. Keep current
  5. Keep your options open
  6. Document your achievements
  7. Balance your specialist and generalist competencies
  8. Build and maintain