Achieving Career Satisfaction

We previously mentioned the difference between career success and career satisfaction.  Career success may be defined as gainful employment, which is necessary but insufficient for career satisfaction.  It is evident that something beyond gainful employment is needed, for otherwise one could not account for those gainfully employed individuals who nevertheless voluntarily pursue changes to other careers.

The Difference Between a Job and a Career

First, let us consider the definitions of a “career” and a “job” according to the Oxford Dictionaries:

Career: “An occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person’s life and with opportunities for progress.” 

Job:  “A paid position of regular employment.”

Although regular employment could eventually turn into a significant period in a person’s life—meaning that a job and a career have certain similarities—there is no mention of “opportunities for progress” in the definition of a job.  The synonyms for progress include advancement, growth and improvement, or what is commonly known in employment circles as a “promotion.”   

Workforce Turnover

In January of 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were 125.5 million hourly and salaried workers in America ages 16 and over.  The median “tenure with current employer” for that group was 4.6 years.  That is, half (62.8 million) of those workers had been with their employer less than 4.6 years and half had been  there more than 4.6 years.  More specifically, 21.1% of those employees had been with their current employer 12 months or less, and only 10.6% had been with their current employer for 20 or more years, suggesting that employers witness a great deal of workforce turnover.  

Note that the above statistics include job changers (who change employers but continue doing the same kind of work as before), and career changers of two different types: 1) those who change employers in order to get an opportunity to perform a more desirable kind of work; and 2) those who remain with the same employer but, through promotion or reassignment, get to perform a more desirable kind of work.

Although various employment experts have estimated that workers can expect to change careers at least three times in their working lives, there is currently little statistical evidence to support those estimates because a change in career—as opposed to a change in job—is difficult to determine when using “snapshot” surveys, the current statistical tool of choice by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The BLS conducts nationwide surveys of employees on an employer by employer basis and, regrettably, “median time with current employer” cannot differentiate between an employee who is changing jobs and one who is changing careers. One way to get precise data on career changers would be to follow individual workers from employer to employer throughout the working lives of all employees.  But with some 125 million workers in America, any such large scale survey might become prohibitively expensive.

Career Dissatisfaction

A glimpse into career satisfaction however may be found in a likely motivation for career changers who are already gainfully employed, viz., the opportunity to perform a more desirable kind of work. 

Many theories of career satisfaction have been developed, but a compelling and universally accepted theory has yet to be formulated.  At its most basic level however, a person who already possesses career success, i.e., a person already gainfully employed would, arguably, not be looking to change careers unless something about their current career was personally unsatisfactory.

It follows that career satisfaction must be looked at subjectively, based on personal preferences having nothing to do with the objective reality of the career success signified by gainful employment.  It brings us back to the critical recognition that success and happiness are two different things, and that while success can be documented objectively, happiness can only be inferred subjectively.

Bernard Haldane - Career Counseling Pioneer

Bernard Haldane (1911-2002) was a British-born physician who came to America in 1946 and is credited with having invented the field of career counseling.  The author of numerous books, including “Career Satisfaction and Success,” Haldane believed that most people who don’t like their career are unhappy because they’re not using their best abilities.

Because it is difficult for most people to judge their best abilities, Haldane recommended that each person should: 1) reflect on their life up to the present to recall those things they considered to be achievements at the time; 2) seek patterns in those achievements that suggest transferable skills to an organization; and 3) market themselves in such a way as to showcase the benefits they would bring to a potential employer.  Haldane is regarded as a founder of the modern “strengths” philosophy of career development in which people seek to pursue careers that match their interests, talents and strengths.