An evidence-based approach to developing your career

Today's working life is quite different from that of our parents and grandparents. We live in more demanding and less predictable times.

(pages 47-50 of printed journal)

By Leisa D Sargent

Are career jobs dead?

Wharton Business Professor Peter Capelli¹ wrote a provocative piece a decade ago arguing that 'career jobs are dead'. While I think his proposition is exaggerated, we do work in a more volatile and less stable industrial and economic landscape. We rely less on linear trajectories - where individuals advance up the corporate ladder within a single firm over the course of their lives, and where one can entrust one's career destiny to a single organisation. Increasingly, workers are experiencing involuntary job loss, career interruptions, and less mobility within organisations. People need to be more adaptable, not be bound to a single organisation and think more carefully about sequences of experiences across both organisations and jobs. What does it mean for you to be part of this new career landscape? It means you have greater responsibility over managing your career capital, and assessing the specificity of your human and social capital - and their transferability.

The primary aim of this paper is to consider what is meant by human and social capital, examine how they develop and what contribution they make to career success - namely, salary, promotion and intrinsic career satisfaction.

Social capital - creating value

Social capital is any aspect of the social structure that creates value and facilitates the actions of the individuals within that social structure. Social capital is created when the relations among people change in ways that facilitate instrumenta action². Two strategies to build social capital revolve around relationships - mentoring and social networks. Often, careers are viewed as individual projects resulting in individual rewards. However, when reflecting on our careers, what is often seen is not a succession of jobs but a succession of people who we have worked with and who made a big difference, for good or bad³.

Consider this story, which highlights how important relationships are in shaping career opportunities. Recently, the Faculty of Economics and Commerce received a very generous one million dollar donation from one of our alumni. It will be used to endow a scholarship for B. Commerce students in need. The donor's own undergraduate experience was a positive one and he recalls an important introduction made for him by a former Dean to a partner of a leading stock broking firm. In remembering this support, he now wants to provide opportunities for future B. Commerce students.

Mentoring

Mentoring is a one-to-one relationship with someone who is more senior to you. It generally has two features. First, career-related mentoring relates to sponsorship, visibility and exposure, coaching and feedback, and the provision of developmental assignments that stretch and challenge. It allows you to 'learn the ropes' and encourages promotion. Second, psycho-social support is where the mentor provides wise counsel, acceptance, confirmation and acts as a role model. This kind of support develops self-esteem, self-efficacy and work-base identity⁴. Salary growth, promotions and compensation are more strongly and positively associated with career-related mentoring than with psycho-social support; while psycho-social support and career-related mentoring are positively related to career and job satisfaction, and satisfaction with a mentor. Psycho-social support is also positively associated with employee retention^5.

Interestingly, formal mentoring programs are nearly as beneficial as informally developed mentoring relationships and are certainly better than not having anything at all⁶. Being mentored also enhances one's advancement⁷, and having a portfolio of mentors may be important in providing different social and know-how needs⁸. It would be remiss not to mention the benefits of being a mentor - there are relational gains as well as identity validation^9.

Social Networks

The second strategy for building social capital is through social networks. Networking involves reciprocity and is an on-going process, being purpose-built. Building networks is not about schmoozing per se. Networks, such as having social connections with people in different functional areas in organisations as well as having contacts at higher levels, confer benefits because they provide access to information, access to scarce resources and career sponsorship, which is in turn related to positive career outcomes such as salary and promotion¹⁰.

Networks are assessed in a variety of ways. In a study of new recruits, a professional services firm found that different network characteristics were related to different work-related outcomes¹¹. For example, informational networks that were large and varied were positively related to greater organisational knowledge. Similarly large, strong, dense informational networks that consisted of higher status contacts were related to being better at doing your job. Strong and large friendship networks led to great social integration at work; and strong, while varied, friendship networks with higher status contacts were positively associated with higher levels of organisational commitment.

Human Capital

Human capital refers to the knowledge, skills and competencies held by individuals and accumulated through their education, training and professional experiences¹². Specific, transferable human capital commands a price premium in the executive labour market, especially when job change is to a similar firm¹³.

In building human capital, key strategies relate to education, undertaking training and development, and engaging in developmental challenges such as acting positions, secondments, high profile project work that is new and novel, organisational tenure and working longer hours. Developing human capital requires an assessment of the extent to which to engage in firm-specific knowledge accumulation, such as in-house leadership programs, versus more generic types of knowledge accumulation, such as an MBA.

Progressing your career

Recent research evidence on how to progress your own career suggests that you will need to develop both your human capital and your social capital to achieve career success. The term career success means different things to different people. Here, I use it to refer to both extrinsic success, such as salary and promotions, as well as intrinsic career success, the personal sense of satisfaction with your career. How you view success will influence the types of career strategies you undertake to develop your career.

To progress your career, three sets of career capital are relevant. The first two are human and social capital; while the third I have termed personal characteristics. This category refers to personality, demographic characteristics and IQ. What follows are the key human capital, social capital and personal characteristics that are related to three types of career success - salary, promotion and intrinsic career success - found in a recent meta-analysis¹⁴.

Being politically savvy is as important as your educational level in predicting salary. Other human capital factors related to salary are work experience, engaging in training and development, working hours, organisational tenure, willingness to transfer and international experience. Career sponsorship and networking are two career capital factors that also predict salary, while having a higher IQ, being older, extraverted, emotionally stable and proactive are positively related to salary. Interestingly, being agreeable is negatively related to salary, suggesting that kind, gentle, trusting and warm people are less likely to have high salaries. They also may not care¹⁵.

A further tangential point is that agreeableness also has been found to be an important predictor in jobs that involve frequent interpersonal interaction such as teamwork¹⁶. So all is not lost if you have this attribute.

For promotion up the ranks, valuable human capital factors include engaging in training and development, having international work experience and working longer hours. Similar to salary, career sponsorship and networking are also positively related to promotion, while extraversion, proactivity and emotional stability are all positive predictors of promotion. Extraversion is particularly related to job performance in occupations that are focused on influencing others and gaining power and status¹⁷.

Supervisor support, career sponsorship and networking are strong positive predictors of career satisfaction. This suggests that social relationships are particularly important for career satisfaction. Engaging in training and development, career planning, identifying with the work you do and working longer hours are all human capital factors linked to satisfaction as well. From the perspective of personal characteristics, emotional stability, internal locus of control, proactivity, and extraversion are also positively associated with being satisfied with one's career.

One of the consistent findings from these studies is the effect of long work hours on career success. As with most things there are trade offs with long work hours - you may have career success but at what cost? Apparently the negatively spillover effects between work hours and work-life conflict become especially serious at very high levels of work hours. One additional work hour in a jam-packed working week increases work-life conflict exponentially. Furthermore, at very high levels of stress each additional hour of work creates marginally less additional strain and physical health problems¹⁸.

We are yet to comprehensively tease out empirically how social capital links to human capital and vice versa. However, theoretically, it appears that social relationships assist us through the knowledge we gain from such relationships and the contacts we make in finding challenging jobs¹⁹. Human capital also develops through vicarious learning and direct feedback (role modeling and coaching). This implies that you should make sure you have someone in your working life who provides you with on-the-job coaching and is a positive and effective role model. From a political perspective, mentors and contacts in our networks may also protect and support us, by signalling what is occurring in the organisation in terms of power and politics and providing exposure and visibility to higher-level contacts in the firm. Our relationships at work as well as in developmental assignments allow us to experiment with new roles and posts; and in doing so, allow us to see if we would like to do more of this type of work. This helps us to clarify our values and career trajectories.

Conclusion

It is critical to understand that today's working life is quite different from that of our parents and grandparents. We live in more demanding and less predictable times. Denise Rousseau is one of the foremost career theorists and she puts it quite succinctly: you can expect 'a lifetime of employability rather than a lifetime of employment²⁰.

This paper sought to provide you with a new framework for thinking about your own career. This includes your social capital - your relationships both at and beyond work, including professional associations, alumni networks, and mentoring relationships; and also your human capital - your political skills, the educational and training investments you make and the developmental challenges you accept at work. Take the opportunity to craft experiments at work and do new projects. Shift connections - develop new contacts, seek out role models and reference groups. And finally make sense of your career - find or create catalysts for change, and use them as occasions to rework your career story²¹.

¹ Capelli, P. (1999). Career Jobs Are Dead. California Management Review, 42, 146-167.

² Coleman, J.S. (1990). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

³ Inkson, K. (2007). Understanding Careers: The metaphors of working lives. California: Sage.

⁴Kram, K. (1985). Mentoring at work: Developmental relationships in organizational life. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman & Co.

⁵ Allen, T.D., Eby, L.T., Poteet, M.L., Lentz, E., & Lima, L. (2004). Career benefits associated with mentoring for protégés: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 127-136.

⁶ Chao, G. T., Walz P. M. &. Gardner, P. D. (1992). Formal and informal mentorships: A comparison on mentoring functions and contrast with nonmentored counterparts. Personnel Psychology, 45, 619-636.

⁷Singh, R., Ragins, B.R., & Tharenou, P. (2009). What matters most? The relative role of mentoring and career capital in career success. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 75, 56-67.

⁸de Janasz, S. C., & Sullivan, S. E. (2004). Multiple mentoring in academe: Developing the professorial network. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 63, 263-283

⁹ Ramaswami, A., & Dreher, G.F. (2007). The benefits associated with workplace mentoring relationships. In T.D. Allen & L.T. Eby (eds.). The Blackwell handbook

¹⁰ Seibert, S.E., Kraimer, M.L., & Liden, R.C. (2001). A social capital theory of career success. Academy of Management Journal, 44, 219-237.

¹¹ Morrison, E.W. (2002). Newcomers relationships: The role of social networks during socialization. Academy of Management Journal, 45, 1149-1160.

¹²Becker, G.S. (1962). Investment in human capital. Journal of Political Economy, 70, 9-49.

¹³ Sturman, M.C., Walsh, K., & Cheramie, R. A. (2008). The value of human capital specificity versus transferability. Journal of Management, 34, 290-316.

¹⁴ Ng, T.W., Eby, L.T., Sorensen, K.L., & Feldman, D.C. (2005). Predictors of objective and subjective career success: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 58, 367-408.

¹⁵Judd, T.A., Higgins, C.A., Thoresen, C.J., & Barrick, M.R. (1999). The big five personality traits, general mental ability and career success across the life span. Personnel Psychology, 52, 621-652.

¹⁶Barrick M. R. & Mount, M. K. (2005). Yes personality matters: moving onto more important matters. Human Performance, 18, 359-372.

¹⁷ Barrick, M. R., Mount, M. K., & Judge, T. A. (2001). The FFM personality dimensions and job performance: Meta-Analysis of meta-analyses. International Journal of Selection and Assessment ,9, 9-30

¹⁸ Ng., T.W., & Feldman, D.C. (2008). Long work hours: a social identity perspective on meta-analysis data. >Ng., T.W., & Feldman, D.C. (2008). Long work hours: a social identity perspective on meta-analysis data. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 853-880. of mentoring: A multiple perspectives approach (pp. 211-231). Malden, MA, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

¹⁹ Ramaswami, A., & Dreher, G.F. (2007). The benefits associated with workplace mentoring relationships. In T.D. Allen & L.T. Eby (eds.). The Blackwell handbook

²⁰ Rousseau, D.M. (1997). Organizational behavior in the new organizational era. Annual Review of Psychology, 48, 515-546, p.520.

²¹Ibarra, H. (2002). How to Stay Stuck in the Wrong Career. Harvard Business Review, 80, 40-48.

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A condensed version of an Alumni Refresher Lecture delivered at the University of Melbourne on16 September 2009.

Dr Lisa Sargent is Associate Professor in the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Melbourne

Volume 6 NOV 2009