Achieving Career Success

As stated earlier, the right college major may be defined as one that leads both to career success and career satisfaction, where success refers to ongoing gainful employment, and satisfaction refers to the employee’s sense of personal and professional fulfillment and happiness accompanying that success.

Win-Win Agreements

Career success requires the initiation and maintenance over time of win-win agreements between the employer and the employee.  And since each party to a win-win agreement must decide for itself what constitutes a win in any given situation, potential agreements must be viewed from both points of view.

Financially speaking, every employee represents an expense to an organization and for that reason employers only create and/or refill a position if they perceive: 1) that they have a problem that must be solved in order to achieve an important organizational goal, and 2) that the right employee hired to fill that position—and not just any employee— represents a solution to that problem.

An Employer’s Problem to be Solved

The first perception—recognizing a problem to be solved—is usually internal to the employer and the organization as they engage in the typical management process of deciding what the highest priorities will be for the precious financial resources available.  Real world organizations rarely perceive fewer problems than the resources necessary to solve them and, for that reason some triage is inevitably required, i.e., deciding “What are the critical problems that cannot be safely postponed any longer?”

Although usually an internal organizational matter not involving the potential employee, there is considerable evidence that entrepreneurial individuals, and companies for that matter, have helped to create opportunities for themselves by convincing other individuals and companies that they have problems they didn’t realize they had.  Think, for example, of any number of media ads that try to convince a person that they, their spouse, their child or even their cat may have a problem they never thought of, whether it be halitosis, gas and bloating, autism or questions about urinary tract health.        

But some employees—especially those already working inside an organization and/or those with a keen understanding of the “industry” of which the organization in question is a part—can sometimes alert an employer to opportunities or threats that they either had not yet become aware of or, perhaps, had not yet completely dealt with.  This is true of any number of the new or promising professions that grow out of public acceptance of external realities such as, e.g., emerging technologies and/or changes in the law.

For example, although Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act were passed in 1964, it was years before every large organization, and many small ones, created positions for “social equity” officers to steer employers safely through the potential minefield of lawsuits and jury awards as those laws took effect.

Similarly, the explosion in computer and internet technologies saw the creation of a new high-level officer, the C.I.T.O., or chief information technology officer, along with many additional staff positions.

Some positions are created at the suggestion of the employee who understands the internal and external environments of the organization so well, that they are able to spot enormous opportunities for, or existential threats to, the organization long before they become obvious to everyone else.  

So while most positions become known through job postings by the employer, others can be and have been created by employers in response to the suggestions of employees or outside observers.

The Employee as a Solution to the Problem

Prospective employees usually become aware of an employment opportunity only after the employer has posted the position in question.  Career success, defined as gainful employment, will then require the potential employee to work to be seen by the employer as the solution to the employer’s problem.

Potential employees should realize that if employment opportunities get posted publicly, employers may be less than candid about what they see as the real problem to be solved.  In today’s competitive world, most employers do not want their competitors to know what problems they face or are working to solve.  As a result, the job posting may be vague or otherwise unhelpful. 

However, research into available organization documents, as well as data on the overall industry, may help the astute employee anticipate what the employer’s real problem might be.  Also, as one gets farther into the employee screening process through interviews, for example, it often becomes much clearer as to what the organization’s problem really is, and how the position in question is expected to contribute to a solution.    

To be successful, the employee needs to understand, and credibly respond to, the true nature of the employer’s perceived problem before having any chance of being seen as a solution to that problem.