Master Career Counselor

Carla Hunter, President of Career Span, Inc. is a Master Career Counselor (MCC) by the National Career Development Association and a Certified Career Coach by the National Board for Certified Counselors. She is an expert in writing resumes, effective job search strategies and interviewing success. Most recently, with over 20 years of navigating the complexity of today's world of work, she published "Finding Your Place in the World of Work", a career interest inventory (2014) and CareerView, an iPad app. As a private practice career counselor and a workforce development consultant, this blog is Carla's trove of ideas, trends, forecasts, and career tips for finding meaningful work.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Dismantled career ladder and a beautiful emerging trellis

In a previous post, I explained the importance of putting our current conceptual framework of "networking" to rest.  It needs a new life, a new branding and certainly a new identity. Most people are uncomfortable with networking's unspoken rules of "small talk" and the seemingly wasted time and energy it requires.

Thus, the formation of interpersonal routing, the concept of purposeful connection to and with important information, people and places.  Interpersonal routing is the axis of healthy colleagial relationships that give and take in an interdependent manner of trust, respect and reciprocity. It is not a one way relationship with each party thinking "what can I take from this encounter?" 
Rather it is an exchange of "what can I help you accomplish?" promoting the principle of mutual benefit.  Networking in its current form feels like you are being robbed or worse, are robbing people of important currency: their time.

If this concept of mutual exchange continues to progress and the bureaucracy of corporate America continues to flatten,  the proverbial career ladder may also be dismantling. In the wake of flat companies there may be increased options of flexibility, decision-making and the collaborative exchange of information (interpersonal routing).

What would be a likely result?

Imagine a trellis of intricate relationships cultivated over time that harness your energy and talent.  The exchange of ideas and collaboration weave you to otherwise unknown options to consider: a new job, updated training, an engaging colleague or an organization that increases your skills and equips you for success.

A trellis requires co-mingling and over time it provides mutual opportunity for small shoots to become very big plants growing in parallel directions that incorporate a new idea or innovative solution.

A ladder provides you with one way up and when swiped from underneath, it can cause a devastating fall.

Today's job market contraction may ease within the next five years, but will continue to demand that we inventory our career development tools. Do we stay on the ladder or do we invest our time in developing the beauty of a trellis? 

In the end, a trellis gives you more flexibility, freedom and choice.  A ladder may appear to be the more encompassing metaphor of how to get from one job to another but my clients are saying very loudly,

"Who moved my ladder?"

They're left hanging in uncertainty, fear and joblessness because the career ladder they were on wasn't suppose to fall apart.  And it did.


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