Are You Successful?

Many of us grew up wondering what we want to be when we grow up – even though we really need to stop asking our kids this question – and thinking about our dream job and our dream life. Most of us probably outgrew those ideas and settled on somewhat more realistic concepts of our dream careers. Still, several of us fantasize about the day we quit our boring or oppressive job and choose the one thing that makes us happy at work. But what is career success and how can you get there?

Ng, Eby, Sorensen, and Feldman (2005) provided a general definition, whereby career success is the “accumulated positive work and psychological outcomes resulting from one’s work experiences.” Clarke (2008) further specified this definition in that career success may be defined through an institutional, objective, or subjective lenses. The institutional career follows progression through a hierarchy of related jobs and is arguably disappearing in our days (Clarke, 2008). The objective career focuses on the publicly observable career and the external measures of success and accomplishment – think of that LinkedIn post about your promotion or that sign with a new title outside your door (Clarke, 2008). The subjective career is determined by the individual’s frame of reference and thus could look vastly different for people performing the same job (Clarke, 2008).

But these lenses are not mutually exclusive. You can probably think of a time when your institutional career was somewhat successful, yet the meaningfulness achieved on the job made your subjective career highly successful or maybe even a time when your new promotion would suggest a successful objective career, but your job satisfaction would indicate otherwise of your subjective career. Hence, an important question to ask may be which lenses do you value most? And how successful is your career in each of these lenses?

Beyond your current success, you may want to look at your likelihood of success. Four sets of variables have been used as frequent predictors of career success and may provide a baseline to evaluate your likelihood of success (Ng, Eby, Sorensen, & Feldman, 2005). First is human capital as individuals’ personal, educational, and professional experiences that influence their career success (Ng, Eby, Sorensen, & Feldman, 2005). Think creativity, knowledge, skills and abilities, training, judgement, loyalty, health, among others; this is what you bring to the table when you start a job and what you may continue to develop on the job. Then is organizational sponsorship, the extent to which organizations support employees in their career success through supervisor assistance, feedback, training opportunities, etc. (Ng, Eby, Sorensen, & Feldman, 2005). Socio-demographic status is another important aspect, as individuals’ gender, race, education, age, religious affiliation, marital status, ethnicity, and others affect their chances of achievement in organizations (Ng, Eby, Sorensen, & Feldman, 2005). Finally, the somewhat stable individual differences, also known as dispositional traits, may be measured by the Big Five, locus of control, cognitive ability, and others such as Adam Grant’s archetype test (Ng, Eby, Sorensen, & Feldman, 2005).

While there is no secret recipe to success – none that we know of, at least – becoming cognizant of your strengths and weaknesses as well as how your organization may support your career attainment will boost your chances of success. Think about what you know and are learning now to improve your performance, the relational characteristics that make you a better team player or a more competent star performer. Think about the structures and incentives your company established to enhance your success and the way your background has shaped you into the employee that you are. What do you value most? What do you want to change?

And finally, as explained by Baruch and Bozionelos (2011), our careers go through five major stages that involve mini cycles within them. We start in the foundation stage by understanding the concept of career and developing fundamental values and attitudes that will guide our performance and career direction (Baruch & Bozionelos, 2011). We move on to career entry, where we acquire knowledge and skills and qualify to become an employee within an organization or to work independently (Baruch & Bozionelos, 2011). We then start advancement, in which we further our knowledge and expertise, move between functions and organizations, and eventually reach an objective or subjective plateau (Baruch & Bozionelos, 2011). We continue to reinforcement by implementing previously made decisions, working with enthusiasm, and possibly even changing education or career (Baruch & Bozionelos, 2011). And we end in a gradual change of roles, whereby we consider and prepare for withdrawal from work-life and thus, pass on our knowledge and experience and begin retirement (which may or may not involve complete disengagement from the labor market) (Baruch & Bozionelos, 2011). Through all these stages, we experience setbacks and victories and have varying degrees of institutional, objective, and subjective career success.

Although it would make life less complicated, career success is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and no two experiences are the same. We may have the same job, title, compensation, purchasing power, and personal life and completely different levels of career success. Yet rather than taking that to mean career success is arbitrary and impossible to fully achieve, you may want to reflect on your current experience and assess how successful you feel right now.

References:
Baruch, Y., & Bozionelos, N. (2011). Career issues. In S. Zedeck (Ed.), APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 2: Selecting and developing members for the organization (pp. 67-113). Washington, DC: APA.

Clarke, M. (2008). Understanding and managing employability in changing career contexts. Journal of European Industrial Training, 32(4), 258-284.

Ng, T. W. H., Eby, L. T., Sorensen, K. L., & Feldman, D. C. (2005). Predictors of objective and subjective career success: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 58(2), 367-408.

By: Teresa Aires