Climbing the ladder - a good career strategy?

Traditionally, climbing the corporate ladder was the sole definition of career progression, especially for people working in medium to large organisations. This made sense - for much of the twentieth century the way to success, and bigger incomes, greater benefits, higher professional standing, was essentially via the incremental pathway.

Of course, the tendency to promote on the basis of seniority or 'runs on the board' meant that many people were made managers who should not have been. They didn't really care or weren't sufficiently invested in the work of the organisation; they had no people management skills; they were in the wrong place (or the wrong career); they were actually good at their job before their promotions but then became really bad at it once they stopped being operational. The 'climbing the ladder' rationale was reinforced by the idea perpetrated by society at large that promotion was good, staying in the same place (or worse still, being demoted) was bad, meaning there was a lot of pressure on people to work beyond their level of competence.

Since the 1980s, the ladder has become a strange beast. In many industries it became shorter, or a few rungs were pulled out, leaving a gaping hole between the workers and the top echelon. In others the bottom rungs started getting wider and wider.

Above all, long slim ladders were replaced by lots of short stocky ones. Many large organisations were cut up into little pieces, which by default led to flatter structures. Take for example the Commonwealth Employment Service where I used to work - there were 16,000 people and three levels of management within individual offices, let alone the regional offices, the zone offices, state and national offices. Come 1998 when the government of the day closed up most of the Department that provided the infrastructure for the CES, and farmed out the services it couldn't simply get rid of to the myriad Job Network agencies, anyone who wanted to stay in the industry found themselves back down the ladder by at least a rung or two.

Strangely, the middle management rungs seem to be growing back. Maybe organisations have realised these people did something after all? Maybe with everyone under so much pressure, they have found that burnout is becoming a huge economic and social issue, and their answer to all of this is to give some people responsibility for other staff members.

The new management structure bears few similarities to those of eras past. While some of the old inappropriate beliefs about worthiness related to position have disappeared, there are plenty of new things to worry about. If you are one of the people who is working in a middle management role, you are probably wondering whether it is everything it is cracked up to be. You are probably finding that you are expected to be 'operational' as well as 'managerial'. You probably find it hard to delegate to those under you because they are already so busy that there are no more minutes to be squeezed out of them. You probably find that when one or more of your staff take a few days off without notice (commonly now accepted as legitimate 'mental health days') you can't get in replacements because the budget won't allow it, or because no-one else knows exactly what that person does. You possibly end up doing their work plus your work, or find yourself making a decision between the two.

As a middle manager in today's working environment, who do you go to when you are not coping? How do you manage competing priorities and crisis situations? Are there resources in your organisation, or even externally, to call on? Or are these simply non-existent. What does all this mean for your career satisfaction and personal success?

Cast your vote in this month's poll so we can start to build a clear picture of the issues middle managers face, and so that we can start addressing them.

Reinvent Your Career - For Adults Only

This month is a highlight in the career diary, the Reinvent Your Career Expo is on in Melbourne over the weekend of 11 and 12 July. My career practitioner colleagues and I will be providing free career health checks and resume checks. We will also be offering a smorgasbord of seminars on a range of career and job search issues. You can find out more about this on the Career Dimensions web page as well as at www.reinventyourcareer.com.au.

This expo is aimed at adult career changers and so I have been thinking about how adults manage the career change process. It is understandable that students often have trouble working out what to do with their lives; after all, everything is new to them and they don't have a lot of life experience to work with.

But an inability to make good career decisions, and to take appropriate actions, is not restricted to young people. From my experience working with people across the lifespan and in diverse industries, I think we have a long way to go before we can say we do this well. I count myself in this group, if I am being honest. I have often found career change to be a difficult process, fraught with complications and strong emotions.

I have had trouble leaving a job that I have been unhappy in. I have dithered and delayed moving on to something better due to what I have argued is loyalty when really it had more to do with fear of the unknown. I have cried myself to sleep at night wondering why I didn't seem to fit in, couldn't develop a particular skill or do a task as well as others around me, and have berated myself for being lazy and not putting in enough effort when really I was simply a square peg in a round hole.

Does this sound familiar? What is even stranger is that, despite my ability to help others dream about the perfect career and then take steps to make it happen, I still struggle with all these issues myself. So it appears that knowledge does not always equal power!

But there is good news. Career change can and should be a highly positive experience. If we can identify the real issues, rather than laying blame on a difficult boss or boring tasks, we can begin taking real steps to move on.

At each stage in life we have different needs, and recognising when our needs have changed, or when we are no longer challenged in a particular work environment, is the first step to reinventing our careers.

Why don't you give yourself the opportunity right now to work out what it is you need from your career, and then measure these against your current job role. Are you feeling stressed, unchallenged, or just plain bored? You probably need to move on. If this sounds like you, why not start with one small step? See a career counsellor! Reply now and find out how you can reinvent your career.

The poll we conducted in July 'Have you ever stayed in a job past its use by date' attracted 7 responses - 6 Yes and 1 No. On the basis of this poll (which admittedly isn't truly representative of the population at large), 85% of people have stayed too long in a job. Which is quite believable, based on my own anecdotal evidencesourced from direct contact with clients.

How important is a university degree when competing for jobs?

My career coaching work provides me with plenty of opportunities to meet highly talented people, across a wide range of industries and occupations. Most of the clients I see are dedicated and hard working with a fantastic array of skills that are in hot demand, demonstrated by their high incomes and excellent appraisals. Not one of the people I have seen over the past two years has taken their career for granted, using every opportunity to increase their employability along the way.

I can easily see that these people have been assets to their employers in the past, and are respected in their current workplace. They will have no trouble getting a new job when they are ready to move on in their career - or will they?

Well, they shouldn't. But something quite strange has happened over the past two to three years. Subtle developments in thinking have caused a mindshift about what makes a candidate worthwhile, with the result that a university qualification is now viewed as a baseline requirement. This phenomenon may have been instigated by recruiters, desperate to find a surefire shortlisting mechanism. It may well be driven by new leaders who have all emerged from tertiary studies and can't imagine why anyone would dare step out in the world of work without at least an honours degree. Perhaps companies are sensing that they need to gear up to meet global workforce expectations. Certainly the universities themselves, hungry to fill their places and obtain their government funding, are getting the message out that you are nobody without an alumni pin to call your own.

So where does this leave my wonderful clients, some of whom have TAFE diplomas, others have clocked up twenty or more years in the workplace, many of whom have mortgages, families and other general living expenses? They would love to be able to fit in time to study, but a university degree takes quite a lot of time and effort to achieve.

There have been moves to address this perceived inadequacy in our over-thirties workforce. Universities have begun offering postgraduate vocational qualifications to assist people with work experience to obtain higher degrees, and to eliminate the need to obtain a Bachelor's degree before doing so. However, those who have a Graduate Certificate in something wonderful are still being told that these qualifications don't count for an awful lot if there is no undergraduate degree behind it.

This worries me on a number of levels.The first relates to advising my clients. Do I tell them to drop their wage to that of a casual waitperson like those who are twenty years younger are doing? Is this even feasible? What may happen at the end of a three or four year degree? Will creeping credentialism attack again and place them in the position of needing a Masters qualification?

My second level of concern relates to the obvious repercussions on our society as a whole when we no longer value what people have to offer in the workplace. Apart from the obvious economic and social implications, and the demoralisation that goes with rejection upon rejection in the job application process, there is a lack of fundamental commonsense about what makes the world turn.

I have a number of university qualifications, including an arts degree, and I am happy to have these achievements behind me. But they don't make me better at what I do, they are just one form of learning that make up my work intelligence.

I wonder just how realistic it is to expect a person who works a 60 hour week to add a study program into the mix. What are the damaging effects of having overworked, overstressed, underconfident workers who feel that nothing they have done or can do will be good enough.

It is definitely time for a rethink. If society at large is going to insist that everyone needs a degree, then we need to make it possible for them to get one. If we decide it really isn't that important, we need to rethink the messages we are telling ourselves and others.

Do recruiters really do background searches on jobseekers?

On speaking to a range of recruiters in the Melbourne area during the period March to May 2009 I found quite a mix of responses to this question. It is generally accepted in the industry that recruiters have, wherever possible, performed background searches. Let's face it, they can't rely on candidates to tell the whole truth about themselves. In a majority of cases this is not a problem, and who would want to know every little detail anyway? However, the cost of hiring an employee is significant and recruiters have their own reputation to uphold.

Traditionally, background checks have involved consulting referees prior to forwarding a shortlist of suitable candidates on to a client. In addition, more informal approaches have been adopted as well, such as speaking to someone who knows someone etc., which was always easier in smaller communities and niche areas than for general roles in large cities. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all easy-to-access social networking sites which make background searching easier. Others come and go as well, but at the present time these are the sites accessed most often.

So, we know they do it, but just how widespread is the practice? Unsurprisingly, the responses I received fell into always, never, and sometimes categories. Those who fell into the 'always' category tended to be involved in recruiting for professional and executive roles where the stakes are high - large salary packages are involved, high levels of responsibility and security access. This was particularly widespread in niche areas such as finance, IT and HR.

Graduate recruiters would not admit to undertaking background searches across the board, but most agreed that they often perform background searches in the final stages, and especially when they are trying to separate two or more excellent candidates. On-hirer firms also fit into the ‘sometimes’ category. Recruiters who sometimes performed background checks using social networking sites were those sourcing candidates for retail, hospitality and administration roles, while those in the 'never' category included short term filling and blue collar roles. The reason cited most often was a lack of time, urgency of placement and the belief that it didn't really help with their decision making process.

Interestingly, of those who said they always performed background searches, around half said this did not make the selection process easier. It seems that if you dig deep enough you will find the dirt on anyone. Working out exactly which dirt relates to employment suicide is another big issue, with responses as varied as those undertaking the searches.

Generally it was accepted by all recruiters that jobseekers should be cautious about what they show the world. Examples abound describing how successful candidates have had offers withdrawn after an unfortunate activity was recorded and/or applauded on Facebook. The recommendation is that, if you must use the web to document everything you do and are, keep that one private, for viewing by your friends only. Have another that is available publicly to present you in the best possible light.