Does the career ladder lead anywhere?

Is the career ladder leading nowhere today? Yes, it’s time for us to get used to the fact that the ideal work biography no longer exists. What has changed and how should we change?

Career transitions

How long ago did you make the transition to a new job, position, department or profession? According to Western studies, every second worker has made such a transition over the past 5 years. Even 20-30 years ago, we sought to find a job for life, for which organizations and the state rewarded us with a sense of protection and confidence in the future. Today, many of us dread the idea of ​​any long-term commitment. And this is by no means a problem of generations, “frivolity” or lack of devotion to one cause.

This is increasingly our adaptive response to the rapidly changing “rules of the game”: growing changes in the labor market, the rapid obsolescence of our professional knowledge, new requirements for competencies and skills, new opportunities that have opened up, the dynamics of society, personal health, our own “I”. The XNUMXst century is stealing one of the “sacred cows” of a person – a clear and unchanging professional identity. Being consistently and devotedly a “lawyer”, “economist”, “journalist” becomes optional. Our professional interests are far more dynamic and changeable than previously thought. So the requirement to choose a profession for life, which causes the sacred awe of parents of adolescents, is losing its sharpness and meaning today.

The traditional model is embodied in the idea of ​​a “career ladder” that is still attractive to many: linear advancement (in rank, position), regardless of what happens and what it costs us. This is a model in which we evaluate our own and someone else’s career success – in terms of salary and position in the company. In addition, these are a number of limiting beliefs: about the possibility of building a new one only on what we have done in the past; that one should never leave an old job until there is a new one; that you can find the best job for yourself and live happily ever after.

In the changeable career model, a person chooses personal freedom, development and satisfaction as fundamental values ​​as a starting point for himself. The measure of success for such a person will be psychological success rather than the salary itself. In addition, this model involves growth, learning and renewal throughout life, as well as much greater mobility of the employee. My colleague, the well-known American career consultant Carol Vecchio, instead of the traditional view of career as a ladder, offered, in my opinion, a very productive metaphor of a career as a journey that has no final destination.

Read more:

• “I’m confused in my profession”

Let me summarize what has been said in three conclusions. 1) We all need to recognize that work and careers in the early 2st century will never be the same as work and careers in the 3th century; XNUMX) There is no single model for building the future; XNUMX) The modern realities of our life require from us much more flexibility, adaptability to changes, lifelong learning, reflection of ourselves and the trajectories of our movement.