Talent Gate | Career development process

Some milestones...

Setting your expectations

The process

What does a successful career mean?

Setting your expectations

Think well if you want a successful career. And think well how that success could look like.

If your concept about career success involves being a person with occupational prestige, a leader or a manager, a person able to influence other people from important formal positions, then you could be our partner. For achieving your dream, walk with us along the entire process.

That's it!

No magic formulas, just a good lens to focus; the power and effort are still yours.

If you have another vision about what your success might be or no visions at all, join us too. Share your concepts with us, get into the process, and stop whenever you want to. You will not lose anything but you will gain by acquiring useful information.

The process

In our vision, a logical way of conducting a career development process involves six steps: identify, explore, decide, set goals, do, and evaluate.

We are not talking about a strictly chronological order. Starting with the second iteration, you can go through the steps below in reverse or in any order that would better respond to your career needs in a certain period.

Identify

Starting point: know your inner potential.

In this section you will have the opportunity to take some professional assessments about cognitive abilities, personality, and career preferences. The results will allow you to benchmark against other people having a similar age range and study level. You will know better your strengths and needs for improvement.

Explore

Career development without good information is like flying blind. You will find in this section information about career exploration activity: beliefs, dimensions of the process itself, and reactions to exploration.

Getting informed is a complex process in which your personality plays a major role.

Decide

We conceived a career decision as making a choice based on information acquired in the Identify an Explore stages. It is about choosing a wide direction and not aiming a fixed target. You will read about career decisional models, decision barriers, and how important your subjectivity or your personality can be in a decision process.

Goal setting

Once you decided on a career path or direction is extremely important to set goals: long term targets and short term objectives. You will read about some important practical strategies in setting goals that will help enhance your performance along the career path

Enough about planning. It's action time! We will share with you some of their experiences and "best practices" which can guide you in pursuing your goals.

Evaluate / Reevaluate

Today's labor world is a changing one, and so is the career process; no more linear trajectories eventually in the same factory or company.

You will need to make continuous evaluations of your achievements, goals, and career satisfaction in order to calibrate the effort or reconsider the target. Going back or going on a parallel route is normal in a career. In all cases flexibility and a realistic evaluation is needed.

What does a successful career mean?

We will tell you briefly what Talent Gate understands by a successful career. You will find a broader discussion about that in the Evaluate / Reevaluate chapter.

We consider a person with a successful career as having already (or being about to) an influential managerial position in a strong company or organization; ideally he/she is satisfied with the current situation (or desires more in the same direction) and is able to act as a leader in developing others and effectively conducting the activities.

We value highly the leadership components of mentoring and people development that our society and economy desperately need.

We are not saying that this is an exclusive definition of career success nor this is the only way of feeling happy about one's life. But this is what we are interested in.

A new world and a new way of pursuing a successful career

The career development is changing as a process because the reality of the work environment is changing.

The "old" concept of career is the product of industrial age. During that age, work was concentrated in employment, learning was concentrated in education, and education preceded employment.

The role of career counseling was to facilitate the passage from one system (education) to the next (employment).

We assist today to a transformation from an industrial society to an informational society which seems to lead to a sum of important changes, as Watts (1996) observed:

(a) the end of the concept of a "job for life"

(b) shorter and less security of tenure

(d) reduction in the number of core workers with more flexible agreements meaning more contracted, part-time, and temporary workers

(e) less loyalty between worker and employer.


Ed Michaels was until 2001 a Director in McKinsey & Company's Atlanta office and he initiated in 1994 McKinsey's War for Talent practice. In his book The War for Talent (2001) he synthesized an expressive parallel between the "Old Reality" and the "New Reality":

Old reality	New reality
People need companies Competitive advantage: machines, capital, and geography Better talent makes some difference Jobs are scarce Employees are loyal and jobs are secure People accept the standard package they are offered	Companies need people Competitive advantage: talented people Better talent makes huge difference Talented people are scarce People are mobile and their commitment is short term People demand much more

You have the potential of becoming the most valuable resource. But this does not mean you just have to stay and wait for someone to discover you.

You have gold inside. Make it shine!

Nowadays, education is becoming a life-long need, but the value acquired must also become visible if you want to be an active player.

Careers are no longer developed by finding the right job in the right corporation, but by creating an ever-expanding personal portfolio.

Typically, a career counselor helped individuals to find and secure jobs matching their abilities and interests. Based on our business and life experience, and according to the new trends, this is only the beginning.

Today's work environment is different and job changes occur often. Searching a new job is not anymore an "entry level" specific phenomenon. You need to develop good "hunting" skills from the beginning and to have a reliable achievement list. This could significantly increase your chances to have smoother and inspired career changes.

A particular attention must be paid to what is called initial conditions, because they are especially influential upon the entire process.

When applied to career path development, this would mean that conditions early in life might shape the patterns and influence the capacity to undergo transitions in later life. The abilities, opportunities, the personality - work environment fit, and level of social connectedness may all determine the entry point of the career path and the transitions along the way.

Do not understand that your first choice is a movement that will drive you fatalistically toward success or fail. Just try to bear in mind that the first step and every step after that are important along your career path. Your choices could save precious time and facilitate the way to success with less effort.

Stay close to us; we will assist your steps and provide guidance when needed.