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Career Module
Building Your Career
What Was Career Development Like, Historically?
What Is Career Development Like, Now?
career
The sequence of work positions held by a person
during his or her lifetime
boundaryless career
When an individual takes personal responsibility for
his or her own career
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The term career has several meanings. In popular usage, it can mean advancement (“she is
on a management career track”), a profession (“he has chosen a career in accounting”), or a
lifelong sequence of jobs (“his career has included 12 jobs in six organizations”). For our pur-
poses, we define a career as the sequence of work positions held by a person during his or her
lifetime. Using this definition, it’s apparent that we all have, or will have, a career. Moreover,
the concept is as relevant to unskilled laborers as it is to software designers or physicians. But
career development isn’t what it used to be!
Although career development has been an important topic in management courses for
years, some dramatic changes have occurred in the concept. Career development programs
used to be designed to help employees advance their work lives within a specific organiza-
tion. The focus of such programs was to provide employees the information, assessment,
and training needed to help them realize their career goals. Career development was also
a way for organizations to attract and retain highly talented people. This approach has all
but disappeared in today’s workplace. Now, organizations that have such traditional career
programs are few and far between. Downsizing, restructuring, and other organizational
adjustments have brought us to one significant conclusion about career development:
You—not the organization—will be responsible for designing, guiding, and developing
your own career.
This idea of increased personal responsibility for one’s career has been described as a bound-
aryless career. The challenge is that few hard-and-fast rules are available to guide you.
One of the first decisions you have to make is career choice. The optimum choice is
one that offers the best match between what you want out of life and your interests, your
abilities and personality, and market opportunities. Good career choices should result in
a series of jobs that give you an opportunity to be a good performer, make you want to
maintain your commitment to your career, lead to highly satisfying work, and give you the
proper balance between work and personal life. A good career match, then, is one in which
you are able to develop a positive self-concept, to do work that you think is important, and
to lead the kind of life you desire. In a recent survey by Capital One Financial Corpora-
tion, 66 percent of college graduates said that a comprehensive benefits package (including,
for example, health care, 401(k) program, child care, and domestic partner benefits) was
the most important factor in their job search. Starting salary ranked second at 64 percent,
with job location ranked third at 60 percent. Today’s college grads are also looking to be
rewarded or compensated (with comp time or matching donations, for instance) for their
volunteer and philanthropic activities.
Once you’ve identified a career choice, it’s time to initiate the job search. However,
we aren’t going to get into the specifics of job hunting, writing a résumé, or interviewing