www.itminddesign.com

A discussion with a colleague of mine around career paths made me want to write this post. He indicated that he was always interested in learning new things but mentioned that he would not take a certain certification because it is not down his “chosen” career path. My immediate thought was, “Wow, how those statements must be in conflict.” He went on to say that being involved in hiring at a previous employer, he was instructed to look for a consistent track in the previous employments of a potential candidate. I think what struck me the most was his hubris about not taking some classes that would actually allow him to provide some value to his team. The arrogance to think that he knows what path he is on and where he is going and anything “beneath him” would just be wrong. I can respect not wanted to focus in areas not in your perceived path, but you don’t have to be condescending about it. I do not have that certification that he doesn’t want, however I think it would help all of us if we had it, and I am more than willing to take the classes. Any training a company is willing to give, I think employees should want to take. Whew, I feel better now.

So, my little rant leads me to want to look at this more. We need to flush out any realities in his perspectives. What makes a career path? Is it really possible to fully plan one out? I know that expectations of what makes a good career has changed. For my father’s generation it was find a good job with good benefits and work hard. Longevity and loyalty was rewarded. Regrettably, those days do not really exist anymore. I remember not too long after the company’s transition from mainframe technology to Open Systems. When my boss at the time and I began sorting resumes for an additional Unix Systems Administrator, my “old school” boss did not want to talk with or meet anyone who jumped around from job to job every couple of years. After finding very few candidates, we learned that the reality of the candidate market for open systems was one where longevity did not really exist. As I have assisted in the candidate acquisition in my various roles over the years, the pattern of job hopping still is predominate.

To try to answer the “What makes/is a career path?”, I think the answer is the some total of jobs and positions through out someone’s life. Individuals often define themselves in terms of their occupation or career. Don’t believe me? Try this then, start meeting new people and keep track of how many minutes or seconds go by before they ask you what do you do for a living. I’m not discounting a person’s job. I am trying to point out that for some it is the greatest defining factor to”who they are”. So, be careful in handling that factor, it can be extremely fragile and easily crushed if inadvertently stepped on.

Now, to evaluate the realism of a fully planned out career. I find out it hard to believe most people, if they had a plan at all, end up where they had planned. I admit there are some with a clear path, who have one goal and work their whole lift to achieve it. Those who want to have a professional sports career or participate in the Olympics. However, the majority of people who set out for these laudable goals ever make it. For those of us with careers that do not have a clear, predefined pinnacle position, how do you know which paths will take you to the perceived “top” position. When I went to college and got my first IT job, all I knew was that I wanted to work in “computers”. At the time, I had no idea how vague that statement really was. Lucky for me, the folks who hired me must have saw something or felt I was worth the chance. I was told long after I was hired that one reason I was hired was that I had worked at one big-box retailer for many years and they found it odd that someone so young could take a job and stick with it. Some more of my embarrassing remembrances about my interview can be found in the posting, IT Workers - The Next Generation. Lucky for me I had “old school” principles.

I have been reading the book Age of Turbulence by Allan Greenspan. I am more than 2/3 through the book and one of the biggest surprises to me is that, Greenspan did not start out focusing on being an economist . He played the clarinet as well as a sax in a jazz band in college. When he went to college for economics, I do not think he was driving toward becoming the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. I’m sure in regards to the careers of economists this position could be seen as one of the capstone job. It is not fair to say that if someone does not reach a pinnacle position in their lifetime that they were not successful. Success, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. As for IT, what job could be considered the pinnacle? Being a CIO or CTO? Maybe. What about those awesome technical wonders who could not manage a team out of wet paper bag? Maybe the Chief Architect at some Fortune 500 company or Principle Architect at some global conglomerate? Could be. I reject that the premise for a job candidate is to be a good, stable employee. There must be some clearly evident path for a person’s career. The span of a career or multiple careers are 30-50+ years for some. I think people require defined levels of stability, variety, and growing challenges. That’s how I define a career no matter what combination of jobs or fields. Those individual levels are set by a combination of several factors including personal, family, and social expectations. An individuals own ego and self-esteem also play into these levels. I’m sure further discussion of these factors need an article of its own.

If someone is still looking for the area that interests them, I can not see holding their search against them. Some need more variety and challenges than others. It’s only our hubris that makes us think that we can be the judge of someone’s career. It’s often easy to forget behind each job title and email is a human who faces similar issues and feelings through out their lifetimes.