Informed Careers

Claymore Partners recently completed its Career Management and Planning Survey which was conducted to better understand the state of career management and planning as well as how to best enhance its effectiveness. We also hope that it helps individuals gain insights into their own career planning and management efforts.

The survey was emailed to about five thousand two hundred individuals and 539 participated in the online survey conducted from February 13 to 22, 2008 for a 10% participation rate. The survey respondents were largely business executives age 30 to 50 years old with annual incomes of over $100,000. There was broad industy representation with a slight concentration in financial services and consulting arenas. 

Major Conclusions

Almost all survey respondents indicated that they have a defined a career objective with their career objective primarily focused on the type of job/role and compensation levels. Their career objective was generally established after having a few early positions within their first ten years of employment. However, only a small percentage have established a documented career plan with most primarily managing their careers by examining new positions/jobs in light of their overall career objective. Most respondents recognized the importance of having a career objective and plan for their utlimate career success, financial well being, and personal happiness. The respondents that had documented career plans tended to have higher income levels and more senior positons.

The respondents felt that the most important parts of a career plan are having a defined career objective, skills/competencies for development, and networking approaches. They also feel that they have been most successful in obtaining the education and training needed for success. Respondents generally felt that they could find career information via self directed research and mentors at work to enable them to establish a career objective. However, many are interested in a career service to further aid and enhance their efforts. They are most interested in career services that enable them to better network about their career development and obtain compensation information during their early and mid stage career development.

Key Implications

Successful executives generally have defined career objectives and use them to evaluate career options to enable them to achieve success and happiness. However, their appears to be an opportunity to do a better job of career planning and management to further enhance their knowledge, effectiveness, and ulimate success. Executives are seeking ways to better:

· Develop and update their career planning approaches

· Enhance their career knowledge (especially salary information) and career options (especially in shifting career focus)

· Utilizing a valued career planning and management service that would add value to these efforts

Career is a term defined by the Oxford Dictionary as an individual’s “course or progress through life (or a distinct portion of life)”. It usually is considered to pertain to remunerative work and sometimes includes formal education. A career is also viewed as a course of successive situations that make up a person’s worklife. 

We have just completed a Career Management & Planning survey that we will be sharing the results of on this blog over the next few weeks.  Please contact me directly if you would like an executive summary of the results.   The survey will provide valuable insights into how we are currently managing and planning our careers.

Thought the following article in Kennedy Publication’s Recruiter News would be of interest. 

When contemplating a career change, one’s significant other may actually become the chief career advisor for many say the latest findings of a national poll developed by Accountemps, a specialized staffing service for temporary accounting, finance and bookkeeping professionals. Indeed, 46% of executives state they turn first to spouses or significant others for advice when evaluating a potential job change, up from 42% in 2002. The survey also shows mentors carry greater clout than five years ago, with 41% of respondents saying they would consult their mentors first, as compared to 28% in 2002. Of the respondents asked to whom would they would most likely approach first for advice when evaluating a potential job change, 46% cite spouse or significant other, up 4% from 2002; 41% claim their mentor – an increase of 13% from 2002; and 4% cite co-worker, down from 13% in 2002. “The advice of mentors, colleagues and other confidants helps when weighing the pros and cons of a career transition, but a job change has personal and family implications,” says chairman and author Max Messmer. “A spouse or significant other is not only familiar with a partner’s overall priorities and motivators, but also has a stake in the outcome of his or her career decisions.”

Financial service firms reported that 70% of their executive hires in 2007 were obtained via third party search firms.  About 36% of executive hires were from retained executive search firms, 31% from contingency search firms, and 3% were from recruitment process outsourcers.  Employee referrals accounted for another 11% of executive hires in 2007. Despite the emergence of many talent acquisition channels, executive recruiters continue to dominate the executive level recruitment market for the financial service industry.  However, talent acquisition channels are significantly different for middle management and front line workers for financial service organizations.  The predominant channels at this level are internal corporate recruiters at 25% and employee referrals at 23%.  The corporate web site also accounted for about 16% of middle market and front line worker hires in 2007.  Interestingly, niche job boards are almost equal to general job boards at 8% and 11% respectively at this level.    The top talent acquisition challenges for financial service firms in 2008 was clearly finding top quality talent and knowing their talent needs in advance. In order to better meet those challenges, financial service organizations are focusing on enhancing their talent sourcing approaches and employment branding as key initiatives for 2008.  Claymore Partners is an executive search and consulting firm specializing in senior business and functional leader searches for top financial services organizations. The 2008 Financial Services Talent Acquisition Survey was sent to over 350 Human Resource Executives from leading financial service institutions across the USA.

Networking is one of the key skills for exploring career options and gaining in depth career information for making informed decisions.  Career networking is different from social networking as it has a specific purpose and a defined approach to be most successful. 

Career networking is using your professional contacts to gain information about what is happening in a particular industry, organization, functional area, or type of business.  People are generally happy to share thier insights and knowledge if done in a professional and valued manner by a skilled networker.  In addition to gaining valuable insights and information, the skilled networker will seek to gain referrals to others for that will further add to their learnings and continue to expand thier network.

Using networking to purely identify a specific job opportunity rarely works well as most people will hesitate to contact you if they do not have an open position or share names of others that may not have a job opening either.  If someone has an open position that they feel you may be a fit for, they will mention it to you.

Welcome to the Informed Careers blog.  This blog is dedicated to helping individuals think about and manage their careers.  Your career is your most important financial asset and the source of much of your satisfaction, but there has been limited availability of career information and planning tools to aid in this critical effort. 

As an Executive Search professional, Corporate Executive, and Consulting Partner; I have seen and experienced many individuals searching for thier next job or taking a position that may or may not aid in thier career development.  The Informed Careers blog will focus on providing sources of information, tools, and advice to aid in the efforts of those seeking to develop and pursue a planned and informed career.