Measuring Career Growth

Introduction Career Management, in its broadest sense, involves managing the growth and evolution of a persons career as he or she makes conscious choices that will have an eventual impact on the return on talent investment made by the person. This includes, but is not limited to, picking the stream of study in standard X or XII, involving a career counselor to find the right career choice, interviewing to find right job, changing roles within a job to get ahead, and re-tooling or re-skilling in order to be more effective at the job, etc. As you can imagine, it is a difficult endeavour to track these life changes and make right choices consistently. Given the fact that most careers in India are managed by the individuals themselves (or by their family and friends), it is important that they should have certain framework handy, so that they can successfully manage their careers. This article looks at one of the important aspects of career management: - tracking and measuring the growth of ones career (or lack of it), in order to keep an unwavering focus on ones ultimate career or life goal. Having a good set of measures is essential for this purpose. We will look at different types of measures that can be used, leading us towards a career growth phase model that can be used as a consolidated measure. There are various measures of success that can be used for career planning and management. One way of measuring career management is to set up goals. When you meet such a goal in time, you know you are on the right track and progressing at the right pace of growth. You can also compare this to a project management problem, where having smaller milestones and deadlines helps in keeping the project on track for successful delivery. There are four types of career goal measures (that can be used for measuring career growth) that I will be discussing in this article: 1. 2. 3. 4. Financial Measure Learning/competencies Measure Job complexity Measure Job Satisfaction/Happiness Measure

In the end, I will propose a career phase model that combines some or all of these measures into a consolidated career growth measure that you can use. Just like a project management problem, time is an important factor and must be taken into account, so I will dwell on it a bit more. . The Time Factor

Time obviously plays an important role in any career plan measurement- five skills picked in one year is hugely more important than the same done over three years, everything else being equal. Similarly, a salary increase of 20% over a year is much more important than, the same increase achieved over three years (obviously!). However, things start getting trickier when one of the measures improves while another deteriorates over a particular period of time. These are common situations, where for example, your learning is happening well in your job, but your boss refuses to increase your salary. What do you do about your career goals in such a scenario? One approach that works well is to assign priority to various parts of your goal and then trade-off appropriately. So in this example, if these were initial phase of your career and the primary goal was learning, you would still continue working with the same enthusiasm even when salary hike is not in sight. However, it is important to constantly evaluate changing landscape of your career growth (or lack of it), because your priorities might change, or new opportunities may arise which increase the rate of growth of any or all of the measures. Financial Measure This is the easiest and most simplistic way of measuring career growth. This is because salary (the most obvious financial goal) is the most quantifiable factor and hence easiest to use for comparison. In many cases, salary and salary growth is indeed proportional to the career growth and it can serve as a good measure. However, most of the time, especially at the start of the career, salary and its growth can depend on too many factors not related to your career growth (industry may be booming/depressing for example) and hence relying on it may lead you astray. Be careful when you use this measure. Even though it may sound trivial or easy, financial goals should still be framed and kept around to make sure you are meeting them. Other than the obvious way of framing the goal (X % raise over Y years), you can also frame them in terms of utility of money. For example, a goal could be paying off my car/house debt in Z years, or saving X in Y years. This is important, especially when you change jobs or relocate and the obvious measure may not be valid any longer(for example, if you move from USA to India or China, it is less clear what raise/reduction in salary meets your goal). Of course, this assumes your career plans take you global! Learning Measure If you are not learning enough, it can be a good indicator that change is needed. A quick, subjective way of measuring this is to ask the question, What did I learn in last 1 year or 3 months or 1 month or last week? There should be a tangible answer to each of these questions, and in an ideal career growth situation, rate of learning should be healthy and going up. Learning could be technical or professional or any skills you think would be useful to your career.

Most learning goals can be defined as acquisition of competencies , a term which is closely related to skill but more measurable. For example, ability to run a meeting is a skill, and competency tells you whether you can run a cross-functional, product release meeting well or you are good only at small 5-person meeting. Most HR departments in good organizations ensure those skills and competencies are defined for various job levels in the form of job descriptions. You can use these descriptions, as defined by your organization, to see where you are and where you want to be. In the context of an organization, these can also map to a particular job title or level, and hence you can also visualize your learning goal as becoming a technical lead. However, remember that most promotions depend on a number of factors other than competency acquisition, and hence title achievement (or lack of it) should not be considered a sure way of measuring competency acquisition. Organizations use various forms of assessment to evaluate competency acquisition, easiest of which is a formal, written test. However, as you evaluate yourself, think of onjob-testing. Think of scenarios where you had to apply a particular competency (managing cross-functional team meetings for example), and self-evaluate. It is also a good idea to enlist some peers (or your mentor) to provide you with feedback which can then be used as your measure. Always ask the questions: How did others perceive my performance? and What visible value/results did I provide to the organization? Job Complexity Measure If your job is becoming complex, it is a good sign, because typically, complex jobs are given to those who do well in simpler ones. However, if job complexity stays the same or goes down (repetition tends to take the complexity away since you become expert), it is time to change something. However, be careful in using this measure, as jobs/projects change infrequently and hence the chance to measure may not come often. As I mentioned before, this is a difficult one to measure, since it changes infrequently and there are too many parameters that influence this. Job complexity comes from how many of the following dimensions are involved in your regular actions and decisions: 1. Hierarchy: How many hierarchy levels (up and down)? 2. Spread: How many peer groups at these levels? 3. Stakeholder measure: How many stakeholders need to be managed in a typical project? 4. Geography: How many locations, countries, time zones and continents do you have to remotely work across? 5. Budget: How much money do you directly or indirectly influence? Complexity is also enhanced (and diminished) by following dimensions of an organization: 1. Processes: For example, a development engineer in a highly process-driven company can function very well without applying any original thought. An

employee of a startup may have the opposite experience, where simple jobs can be quite complex. 2. Culture: Culture can make routine tasks more challenging (and vice versa). For example, in USA, typically software engineers are senior enough that they know what they want to do with their career, and hence if you are a manager, your job is easier. However, if you are a manager in India or China where there are considerably more junior people, managing becomes mentoring, 1-1s become more involved and complex, and hence the being a good manager a considerably complex affair. 3. Structure: For example, a matrix organization (A typical organization is pyramid-shaped, with the boss at the top. A matrix organization has dual lines of authority, responsibility and accountability, and individuals may have two or more bosses to report to) may make a job more complex (or the other way round). A good rule of thumb is to ensure that job complexity stays as it is or goes up. Job Satisfaction/Happiness Measure One of the comments on my blog article on this topic went like this: Clearly I see Satisfaction as another yardstick to measure achievement of career goals. You may get well paid, you may learn something, you may be given more responsibilities but do all of these collectively give you job satisfaction? This is a great point. Without job satisfaction (or happiness), a career goal is not going to be useful or productive for the individual. While it is debatable whether job satisfaction is a destination or a journey (goals are definitely destinations), it is important to factor this in, while setting goals. My experience while working with many professionals has been that people are happy/satisfied when they are working in the area they like and love, in which they are good at (strengths), and are working in a way that is aligned to their value system. As I consistently point out in my blog posts, a good and successful career plan must factor in your strengths and weaknesses, your likes and dislikes, as well as your current and desired skills, and align itself to the value system and your life goal. If you define your goals keeping these factors in mind and work towards achieving those goals, satisfaction (and happiness) will be a likely by-product and outcome (depending on whether you define satisfaction as a component of destination or journey). Career Phases Model for Growth Measurement To round-up this discussion, I would like to present a model that you can use, to handle some of these measures in a useful way when you engage in your career planning and review. As I mentioned before, job complexity and job satisfaction are important measures, but difficult to quantify in any meaningful way. I have found them more useful in subjective reviews of the career plan rather than trying to have some quantifiable measure for them.

Another practical way of using them with this framework, is to employ them to prioritize a goal over another (for example, your job satisfaction goals might dictate that learning is more important for you than earning more) To keep the framework simple, I have only included the financial and learning measures in this framework. Assuming that you have defined your financial and learning measures, that you want to achieve over a defined time period, following table describes various scenarios that you may encounter. I use a positive and negative sign to denote that actual value is more or less than planned value, respectively. This means that + is good in financial and learning column (achieved more than planned) but bad in time column (using more time than planned). For example, Type 1b below denotes the scenario when you are earning more than your financial goal for the period (which is good), learning less than your learning goal for the period (which is not so good), but it has taken less time than you planned for (which is a good thing).

Financial + + + +

Learning + + + +

Time + + + +

Career Phase Too early to review Learning Earning Shining Slowing Stagnating Struggling Too late to review

Type 0 1a 1b 2 3a 3b 4 5

Figure 1: Career Phase Scenarios

The rows with all and all + are not valid for this discussion since they signify that this is not the right time for doing a career plan review, it is either too early or too late. Goal should be to do career reviews at right frequency so that all + or all are never an issue. Here are the types of careers phases that arise out of above table:

Learning (Type 1a): This is the phase where more learning is happening than planned, but financial gains are not aligned with these learning gains. However, since this is also happening faster than planned, this is a good phase to be in. Typically, this happens at the start of a career (or after significant change in the career). Earning (Type 1b): This is the phase where your financial gains are much more than planned, but learning is not happening that fast. This is not a good phase to be in at the start of a career (though it feels good to be in this phase!). In a good career curve, this should be a transient phase, soon to be taken over by Shining

phase. Later in the career, this can be a good phase to be in since learning typically slows down anyway. Shining (Type 2): This is the phase for a rising star, a career on a fast track, where all measures are exceeding expectations. However, it is unlikely to last long because expectations (both for employee and employer) change and goals keep getting harder and harder. This is a phase typically hit when your learning is proven to be useful to the organization (and the organization continues to reward you for that). To stay in this phase, it is important to continue to direct the learning to organization goals (not all learning is useful for organization). This phase eventually gives way to Slowing or Stagnating phase and you should control this transition so that you can avoid stagnation. Slowing (Type 3a): This is the phase when your financial gains continue to meet your goals but learning slows down. This is typical for most organizations and careers, new learning becomes increasingly more difficult (and organizations tend to reward depth of expertise rather than breadth). This is not necessarily bad in the middle or late part of the career. This also depends on how important learning is for eventual career goal. Many careers stay in this phase for a long time, and many individuals do not even realize they are out of Shining phase and into slowing phase. Stagnating (Type 3b): This is a phase where enough learning is happening but financial goals are not being met. This typically happens when the learning is not directly benefitting the organization you serve, or they do not appreciate this new learning. Either way, this is not a good phase to be in; goal should be to either change the type of learning to be more aligned to organization needs, or find an organization which appreciates your new learning. Struggling (Type 4): This is an undesirable phase of the career, but an equilibrium where every unmanaged career will end up. Neither financial nor learning goals are being met and you are losing time. As you can see, this is the worst state to be in. In early part of the career, this phase should be avoided at any cost, and it is not difficult to do so. However, in the middle/later part of a career, it is hard to get out of this phase. Most of the time, a significant change (which requires very different skills) is needed to get out of this phase.

This series of phases is cyclical. Any significant career beginning or change (if planned well) moves you to Learning (or Earning) phase and you progress through these phases from Type 1 to Type 4 and come back to equilibrium state which I call Struggling.

Start of Career

Type 1a Learning

Type 1b Earning

Type 2 Shining
Career Path Change

Type 3a Slowing

Type 3b Stagnating

Type 4 Struggling

End of Career

Figure 2: Career Phase Progression

Above description is a simplistic way of looking at the impacts of various measures and goals to the career scenarios; it specifically doesnt account for the extent of different between actual and planned (for ex, you may be learning more than earning, but if your learning increase is huge, and earning loss is small, this may be a good state to be in, but these are hard to quantify), and it also doesnt account for prioritization of goals that an individual may have made (financial goals may be 10x more important than learning for some). Still, I have found this to be a very useful way of measuring the career growth in my experience in managing people in India and US. Conclusion One of the most important aspects of career management is to be able to identify whether the career is growing, and if so, at what pace. The best way of measuring career growth is to create a career plan, define career milestones, and then check whether the career is meeting those intermediate milestones or not. This article looks at various dimensions in which such career milestones can be defined and pros and cons of each of them. The career phases model presented above can be used to fruitfully by the readers to track and measure their career growth once the career goals and milestones have been defined. For more details on the specific methodologies that can be used create these career goals and milestones, you can review other articles on my blog site

(http://careermanagement.wordpress.com) (http://www.careergrapher.com).

and

on

the

Career

Grapher

site