The Business Skills Handbook

The Business Skills Handbook

The Business Skills Handbook Careers and ‘Futuring’ Skills Week 19

Reading Recommended text: The Business Skills Handbook Horn, R. London: CIPD 1st edition, 2009 ISBN: 1843982188 Chapter 19: Careers and ‘Futuring’ Skills (page 475)

Lecture Outline • the skills required to manage a traditional career • the skills required in modern careers: protean and portfolio • understand career theory • strategies for making the transition into a career

Learning Objectives • understand the nature of twenty-first-century careers • develop skills appropriate to different types of career • understand and use strategies to make the transition to employer

Careers • Careers and the notion of ‘a career’ can be characterised in many different ways. I will look at three possible characterisations and associate these with the skills required to succeed. Before we do that, let’s spend a few moments reflecting on the nature of careers.

Careers [2] Spend some time thinking about the following: • What is the difference between a career and a job?

Careers [3] • In reality, is there such a thing as a career or is it just a succession of jobs?

Careers [4] • If a career exists – do you own it and control it or does the organisation you work for own it and control it?

Careers [5] • If you don’t work in paid employment, can you have a career?

Careers [6] • We often use the term career without ever exploring what it means. Different groups have defined the word ‘career’ in many ways. Psychologists would define it as ‘the pattern of organisational experience throughout someone’s life’.

Careers [7] • A career coach might define it as a ‘a work-related dream that is defined by goals and milestones’.

Careers [8] • An experienced manager might define it as ‘the upward progression or job roles within a single industry’.

Careers [9] • You can see from my few examples that it has been and can be defined in numerous ways. So does that mean it is a meaningless term that is of no use when thinking about the skills required to enable you to have a successful working life?

Careers [10] • The main benefit in considering the notion of a career is that it creates an entity, something that exists. If a career is something, if it exists, it can be managed. So to my way of thinking the term ‘career’ is useful because it creates something important that you have to manage.

Careers [11] • This leads to the notion that being successful involves having a ‘good’ career. And further, to have a good career you need to manage it and bring skills to bear on that career. Careers are not all the same and the skills you need to succeed vary with the different types of career.

Organisational or Traditional Career • Traditional careers, also called organisational careers, will be played out in only one or two organisations. People would enter organisations at a young age and by progressive promotion rise up the corporate ladder, achieving status and pay increases as they progress.

Organisational or Traditional Career [2] • The organisation supports employees and maps out their career paths. They provide a safe and secure working environment where time served is more important than outright performance. In some circumstances an individual career would change organisations, but this was often only among two or three employers.

Organisational or Traditional Career [3] • The locus of control always lies with the organisation and techniques such as manpower planning, succession planning, job rotation and overseas assignments are the means of organisational control.

Organisational or Traditional Career [4] • Traditional careers still exist in large organisations, but this career path is available to fewer and fewer people as organisations become smaller and leaner. If you enter an organisation through a graduate recruitment programme, you can expect to see some elements of traditional careers.

Organisational or Traditional Career [5] • Modern businesses are much flatter organisations where the number of layers of management are considerably reduced. Therefore even in large organisations the inexorable rise up the corporate ladder is not often seen.

Organisational or Traditional Career [6] • Career paths tend to take zig-zag routes that go upwards, sideways and sometimes down. Sometimes these careers paths will change dramatically to different professions even if they do stay within one organisation.

Organisational or Traditional Career [7] • One other trend away from traditional careers is the move to part-time and flexible working.

Organisational or Traditional Career [8] • The term psychological contract has been used since the 1960s to describe the mutual, but mostly unexpressed, obligations of employee and employer. These obligations are mostly informal, imprecise and developed by custom and practice.

Organisational or Traditional Career [9] • But, both parties are expected to abide by this unwritten and informal contract. If the employer breaks the contract, the employee feels betrayed and often leaves the organisation, or stays and operates in an unwilling manner.

Organisational or Traditional Career [10] • If the employee breaks the contract they are often ostracised or feel the pressure from peers or management to leave the organisation. The psychological contract covers a wide range of actions and behaviours by employers and employees.

Organisational or Traditional Career [11] • The traditional career is not dead but you are less likely to experience it in the way your parents would have done. The majority of your parents would have been employed full-time in a few organisations throughout their working lives. Your experience is more likely to be one of mixed career approaches during your life after making the transition to work from university.

Protean Career • Protean careers place the emphasis for managing the process on to the individual. They are essentially a twenty-first-century self-managed career. Protean is named after the Greek god of the sea who could change form at will to match the environment. The term protean is often applied to something flexible or ever-changing.

Protean Career [2] • Protean careers were first suggested by Hall (1976) and the term came to be used more extensively during the later part of the 1990s. As economic change required organisations to delayer and outsource functions, the hierarchical structures of bigger organisations were slimmed down.

Protean Career [3] • The traditional career relies on having many organisational layers to provide the progression steps upwards. Once these were removed by delayering and downsizing, the concept of traditional careers was undermined. This was further eroded as the practice of working with one employer for a whole working life gradually disappeared.

Protean Career [4] • So protean careers are likely to have frequent changes of organisation, job role, work setting and contractual arrangement. It may be that the traditional psychological contract as exemplified above is now broken and will not be seen again in the Western world.

Protean Career [5] • If we follow the format of the table above and use it to explore the protean career, you will begin to see the differences. There will naturally be more elements for the employee than the employer as the control of careers passes to individuals.

Protean Career [6] What skills will be needed to manage a protean career? • Using this book will help you to focus on developing skills that transfer well between workplaces.

Protean Career [7] But more specific actions will help you manage your protean career: • Keep a skills inventory in a form that you can use when you network or are interviewed for roles in organisations. • Keep an up-to-date portfolio of your achievements so that you can show potential new employers. • Maintain an up-to-date CV. • Become a member of your professional association.

Protean Career [8] Scan the employment market in your sector so that you know: • the major employers • the salary rates • new projects that are being developed • network contacts • the desired skillset for any areas you are interested in

Protean Career [9] • Ensure your key skills, those we have been studying in this book, are up to date. • Focus on and record all learning opportunities. • Ensure you have an up-to-date and well-developed CPD file in an appropriate form for your professional association.

Protean Career [10] • Develop meaningful relationships with peers, employers, customers and competitors. • Organise and prioritise your wants and needs. • Actively manage your work–life balance. • Invest in yourself, setting aside time and money to develop marketable skills. • Take every opportunity to network

Protean Career [11] • Management authors have always looked for a definitive set of skills and competencies to indicate the effective manager. This has proved an elusive concept, but Pedler, Burgoyne and Boydell (1994) developed a competency classification system reflecting the successful manager.

Protean Career [12] Their research indicated that there were three levels of competencies and qualities an effective manager possessed. In order, these are: 1. basic knowledge and information 2. skills and attributes 3. meta-competencies

Protean Career [13] Hall et al also make reference to ‘meta-competencies’ in terms of managing protean careers. They list the two meta-competencies as: • self-awareness • adaptability

Protean Career [14] A further set of skills that would allow for the effective management of protean careers includes: • planning, organising and priority-setting • self-assessment of skills and attributes • focus on and development of saleable skills • relational skills • social skills • reflective learner skills

Protean Career [15] • personal management skills of work–life balance • coping with change skills • networking skills • sense of security and identity – self-worth skills • stress control management skills • retraining and development skills • Protean careers are likely to be far more common than traditional careers as business adapts to global competition.

Portfolio Career • Portfolio careers, as the name suggests, consist of a portfolio of jobs. These can include full-time or part-time jobs, paid or unpaid. They will normally be with a range of employers in a range of places.

Portfolio Career [2] • They may well be completely different types of job. For example, a professional HR practitioner on a fractional appointment may also have a hobby organisation producing plants in a small nursery.

Portfolio Career [3] • Portfolio careers exist most commonly for the newly graduated or young person and, at the other end of the spectrum, for the newly retired or partially retired person.

Portfolio Career [4] • For the newly graduated, it is a way to make some money and gain some experience. For the newly or partially retired person, it is a way to top up a pension and keep active and involved.

Portfolio Career [5] • For the young portfolio careerist it is often a transition stage to a protean or traditional career. For the older person, it is often a permanent change of approach that allows them to be in more control of their lives and to some extent, when working voluntarily, to give something back to the local community.

Portfolio Career [6] • There is a further group of portfolio careerists who choose the approach for work–life balance reasons so that they are more in control of when and where they work. It is also a chosen option for those who want some security but also want the freedom to create their own enterprise.

Portfolio Career [7] • Portfolio careers are built around a collection of skills and experience. The skills required for managing a portfolio career are very similar to those needed for a protean career. These feature the meta-skills of self-awareness, adaptability, self-organising and networking skills.

Portfolio Career [8] • An example of a transitional portfolio career might be the new graduate who works voluntarily one day a week in a conservation area. But also has two days’ paid work at a marketing agency and works two evenings in a bar.

The Business Skills Handbook