How to identify your vocation?

The notion of a vocation is one that the career scholars have been thinking a lot about over the past decade. Dik and Duffy, who seem to be the academic leading lights on this topic, have recently published a paper summarising what we have found out and what is yet to come.

From a practitioners perspective, there is a huge gap in the research. It’s all very well knowing how marvellous it is for individuals who have found their vocation (and the list of benefits is huge - not only job satisfaction, but life satisfaction, better health and a whole host of others), but what we’re really interested in is how can we help clients to find theirs. The literature seems pretty sketchy on this point, but there are a few ideas put forward which we might be able to work with.

First it could be helpful for clients to simply know a bit about what it is. It might be useful for a client to know that one's vocation can be measure on a continuum - it's not something that you either have or don't have, but something that you can have a bit of, or a bit more of. It might seem a bit unrealistic for some clients to think that they ought to find their whole life purpose in their job, but moving a degree or two towards a vocation could feel a bit more achievable and could have some real benefits.

It could also be useful for clients to understand the three key elements of a vocation: First for it to be a calling, there must be a caller. Traditionally, this has often been conceptualised as a spiritual thing, but the caller could be anything - one's country, community, a group of people or a sense of destiny. Second for it to be a vocation, the purpose of your work needs to be very similar to you life purpose - so that the values driving the work-you, are the same as those driving the whole-you. And third there needs to be some pro-social element to the role - you need to feel that you are doing some good in some way - whether that is working with the vulnerable and needy, or providing bigger dividends to shareholders. 

Leading on from that last point, I think it's useful to remember that vocations don't need to be carey-sharey doing-good roles. Around a third of us have feel that we have a vocational orientation to our jobs, and this is pretty consistent for all occupations (surprisingly perhaps). I did hear one lovely story that illustrates this nicely. The cleaner at Nasa was asked what he did for a living, and his reply was 'I put people on the moon'.

So finally, just a few thoughts to bear in mind in discussions with clients. Duffy and Dik suggest that we should encourage clients to develop openness in new directions, to actively explore their interests, values and skills and think about how these match with potential jobs. Discussions around how jobs could connect with some kind of pro-social orientation could be fruitful - either thinking about what other jobs could have a pro-social orientation that chimes with their values, or thinking about ways to make their current jobs more socially orientated.

But there are still big gaps in our understanding of how interventions can help us identify our vocations. If anyone fancies doing a research project, do let me know!

Duffy, R.D. and Dik, B.J. (2013) Research on calling: what have we learned and where are we going? Journal of Vocational Behavior 83 428 – 436

How to be more successful at work

I've just been reading a paper that describes a meta-analysis of studies that examine the factors that make us successful at work. Of course the whole notion of what 'success' looks like in career terms is up for debate (one to return to another day), but for the purpose of this article, the researchers were looking at the factors that predict salary and promotion.

The first thing I found interesting was that there are apparently two identified ways to promotion in the work place. The first is known as 'contest mobility' which is promotion based on merit. Promotion is based on an open contest, and the most suitable person gets the job. The second is 'sponsorship mobility'; which refers to the idea that the person who gets promoted is the one who has been chosen by the organisation as a high flier. Early in your time in any organisation, the senior managers make a decision about whether you are the kind of person they want to promote. If you are the chosen one then you are likely to get the promotion regardless of whether you are actually the most deserving.

Contest mobility is (thankfully) the more common reason for people to get a promotion or pay rise, but I was interested to see that as well as leading to higher chances of promotion, being sponsored by your organisation is also a really clear predictor of job satisfaction. It seems that the feeling that your managers rate you and want to help you in your career makes you feel good about work, over and above its impact on objective factors such as promotion and pay.

In terms of top tips for clients (and indeed ourselves) looking to climb the corporate ladder, the strongest predictors of salary are:
1. Your IQ
2. Your education level
3. Your political knowledge and skills

And the factors most likely to lead to a promotion are:
1. The amount of training you get access to (strongly linked to the organisational sponsorship idea)
2. Your social capital
3. The hours that you work (the more the better).

The notion of organisational sponsorship is a good one to share with clients, as it seems that putting in a super human effort in the early stages of your time in an organisation to try and make the right impression, pushing for training opportunities and working long hours are likely to pay off.

Ng, T.W.H., Eby, L.T., Sorensen, K.L. and Feldman, D.C. (2005) Predictors of objective and subjective career success: a meta-analysis Personnel Psychology  58 367 - 408

Disabilities and the selection interview: discrimination and disclosure

Discrimination against people with disabilities seems still to be present in employment selection, but I was interested to read this week that not all disabilities are considered equal in the eyes of prospective employers. When compared to candidates without disabilities, candidates with physical disabilities tend to be rated most favourably in job interviews, with the highest employability ratings and the highest number of job offers.  The next most highly rated group are candidates with sensory impairments, and the least likely to be given a job offer are those with psychological disorders. This, I guess, reflects the stigma still very much associated with mental ill health and the lack of understanding and awareness that is so widespread in society.

Disclosure – whether to and when to disclose a disability can be a tricky decision. Some with a hidden disability prefer not to disclose at all to prevent the negative attitudes and discrimination that they feel is inevitably associated. Others prefer to disclose upfront, not wanting to drag themselves through a stressful process only to be rejected when their disability finally emerges. You might feel that you stand more of a chance of getting the job if you don’t disclose until after the job offer is in the bag, but you then risk starting a working relationships with your new manager on the wrong foot, as they may feel resentment at being misled.

Clients often ask advice on this tricky issue, and I've always felt a bit lost as to how to best answer their questions, but I've now found a few bits of evidence in the academic literature that can help me.

Candidates with visible disabilities (most studies have been conducted with wheelchair users) tend to do better in interviews if they make some verbal reference to the disability during the interview, but interviewers are more comfortable if this reference is made towards the end of the interview. Candidates with a non-visible disability are rated more highly in terms of how qualified they are and how likable they are if they disclose their disability at the start of the interview rather than at the end. 

It's interesting that there is such a clear distinction between what goes down well if your disability is visible, and what goes down well if it's not. It seems that an employer's primary consideration is that they do not want to feel that they've been misled, anything to do with how socially confomfortable they feel is secondary. A candidate in a wheelchair is hardly going to be accused of misleading an employer so the employer can then go to their second consideration, which is that they feel more comfortable discussing the disability after they have developed some kind of relationship with the candidate first. With an invisible disability, the employer is most concerned with whether or not they feel that they have been misled, and not mentioning the disability until the end of the discussion, is liable to make the employer feel that that have been duped in some way.

I don't think that I would give this information to a client in the form of advice (I seem to be pretty much against advice in most professional situations!) but I think the information could be really useful and empowering to clients as they reach their own conclusions.

The Golden Handshake?

Just a short one this time. I'm delighted to have found a paper that looks at the handshake in interviews and what impact handshakes have on interview outcomes!

The handshake does make a difference to your chances of getting a job offer. First of all, a handshake is more likely to lead to a positive employer rating than no handshake. But a good handshake is the best of all. A 'good' handshaker is one whose grip is full and firm, whose shake is vigorous and lasts some time and who maintains eye contact with the other person throughout.
Employers who receive this kind of desirable handshake are more likely to think the candidate is likable, warm and better qualified to do the job, and they are likely to think that they would be more satisfied with their choice if they hired this candidate.
Now that perhaps isn't a great surprise - we all know that employers (indeed, all of us) make judgments based on all sorts of nonverbal cues that aren't related to the job description.

Here's the bit that surprised me.

Handshakes actually are related to certain personality traits that are in turn linked to people's abilities to perform certain roles. A 'good' handshake correlates with an individual's degree of extraversion, emotional expressiveness, emotional stability and social confidence.

So then one final point which is about gender. There is a psychological concept of 'positive deviation'. This occurs when someone is particularly highly credited for doing something that they are not expected to do. In this case, women are not generally expected to give 'good' handshakes, so if they do, the employer gives them a particularly positive rating.

So, I'm not sure what that says about the validity and fairness of our selection procedures, but it's a great thing to be able to teach your nervous students as they prepare for their job interviews.

CVs - what do we think we know? And why do we think we know it?

One of the most popular services that career coaches offer is help with constructing a winning CV. And for some reason, there is a desire in clients, policy makers and practitioners to be a little more directive when it comes to CVs. Perhaps this is an arena where people imagine there are hard and fast rules, and see the career coach as the holder of the knowledge. Or perhaps it's a more practical issue that there tends to be quite a demand for this service and stakeholders are keen to capitalise on this popularity by treating it as an 'easy win'.

My philoshophical stance on this is that there is no more reason to be directive when it comes to CV checks than for any other career query, but I can quite accept that others don't share my view. What I do find curious is that although it's the one area that we seem to feel most confident about telling clients what to do, it's probably the one area where there is least empirical evidence to back our directions up.
There is, for example, loads of empirical evidence about what makes people happy at work, but most practitioners wouldn't dream of saying 'now I don't think you should apply for that job because there isn't much autonomy and so it's not going to make you happy'. We just wouldn't. But, we do seem happy to say 'I don't think you should include your Primary School education on this CV'. Even though there is PLENTY of empirical evidence that autonomy makes you happy at work, and NO evidence that inclusion of Primary school education scuppers your chances of getting an interview.

Anyway, I've been digging around the published studies about CVs and it's been quite surprising. The first surprising thing is that there is so very little published about this. I've found perhaps 20 or 30 papers published in peer reviewed journals, but over the course of the last 20 years, it hardly seems to be a hot topic. And if I thought it was sparse for CVs, the evidence on cover letters is much more scarce - I could only find one single study that explored what kinds of cover letters lead to interview. And of course, as usual, most of the research was conducted within the US, and most of it was based on the job searches of final year undergraduates (a very over-researched group because they are so easy for academics to survey) which is interesting, but not necessarily generalisable to all contexts.

The next striking finding for me, is that what employers think they like in a CV, is different from what they actually base their decisions on. There have been a few studies that have shown this, studies where the researchers have questioned the employers on what they base their decisions on, and then analysed the CVs that had actually been shortlisted, and looked at what made them stand out. In one study (Cole et al 1994) the employers said that they based their decisions on work experience and academic qualifications. In practice these employers actually shortlisted people based on their extra-curricular activities, and furthermore, the higher the academic qualification, the less likely a candidate was to be invited for interview. Other studies have shown that there is little interrater reliability in employers' views on CVs (ie two different people looking at the same CV, with the same job description in mind, are likely to end up with very different opinions on the candidate), and that employers make, generally pretty inaccurate judgments about candidates' personalities, based on the facts in the CV.

This mismatch between what recruiters say they do, and what they actually do I think is particularly interesting given that there are hundreds of books and articles purporting to give quality advice on CVs published every year. Many of these are written by people who have had little or no genuine credibility within this arena (and yes, I talk as someone who has written many articles and even book chapters on CVs, but have done only a small amount of recruitment from CVs myself, and until recently, had read none of the good quality research on the subject), and even the best of the books base their advice on the author's own experience of shortlisting from CVs, and on advice from other employers.

This is all another symptom for me, of the huge gulf that exists between academics and practitioners. Why are academics not publishing more about the topics that concern practitioners? And why are practitioners not basing their practice on the research? And I'm not sure what the answer is. Do University Careers Services need to become more like other University departments, where they are expected to produce research themselves? This would certainly make sure that practitioners are closer to the research, but quite where they would get the time, I'm not sure.... Any ideas?

How do I love thee? Let me count the Js

I've just read a paper that I found quite astounding. My first reaction was to check the date of publication to make sure it wasn't April 1st. My second was to feel al bit overwhelmed about how little I seem to still know about how we make career decisions. And my third was to start to feel that as career professionals we're up against it as we try to influence the career decision making processes of our clients.

The paper was by Ansel and Duyck, Implicit Letter Preferences in Job Choice,and was published in the Journal of Psychology (1999, Vol 143 (2)). It's based on something called 'name-letter' preference and this is the quite well evidenced finding that we have a preference for things that include the letters in our own names, in particular the initial letters. This preference has been shown to have quite an impact on all sorts of life decisions, such as where you choose to live (suggesting that it's no coincidence that my friend Viriginia lives in Virginia Water) and who you marry.

This paper was looking at the impact this name-letter preference on job choice. It illustrated first that within certain professions there is a higher incidence of people with similar sounding names: apparently, there are an unusual number of dentists called Dennis.
They also conducted some experiments to see what kind of organisations people are more likely to apply for, and found that people say that they are more likely to want to apply to organisations whose names are similar to their own. They conducted one experiment where they made up names of organisations that sounded very much like the participant's name showing for example, that a participant called Kelly, was more drawn to an organisation called Kelokoa nd another using names of real organisations, and showed, for example, that a participant called Jack would be likely to be drawn to a company such as Johnson's or John Lewis.
These effect size was small - the researchers are not suggesting that this is the main basis of most people's career decisions. But the effect is pretty consistent and does make a difference.

So what do we as practitioners do with this kind of information? Well, in truth, the effect size isn't big enough for us to worry too much about. But it makes me thoughtful about two different aspects of our practice. First it suggests that we still have very little understanding of how we make career decisions - for all the decades of research that has gone into the field, we're still nowhere near a complete understanding. The more I read about the research, the more irrelevant the safe and straightforward world of Holland's matching theories, but nothing as comprehensive and easy to understand has emerged to take its place. My second concern is about the huge impact that the unconcsious has on our decision making. Not that I'm suggesting that the unconsious has no part to play in the career decision making processes, but I just struggle to see exactly how our traditional practices can help. Our standard line is to address career issues at a conscious and rational level, but how can we compete with these kinds of unconscious processes that we are quite unaware of, and can't control?

Do you want a pay rise? Here's how...

Judge and Cable in the Journal of Applied Pscyhology last year (2011 vol 96) found some evidence to confirm all my worst fears about the relationship between women's weight and the workplace. Thin (by which I mean actively, unhealthily, under-weight) women, it seems, are paid significantly more than women at a healthy weight. The evidence suggests that for men, their pay tends to go up as their weight goes up, until their weight reaches obesity, when pay levels off and then decreases. For women, their pay goes down as their weight goes up, and does this particularly rapdily between 'thin' and 'average'. What is particularly striking about this study is that some of the data came from within-individuals. So as well as looking at the population as a whole (thin women tend to earn more than average women), they traced participants' earnings and weight throughout their careers, showing that as an individual woman's weight goes up and down, so her salary, correspondingly, is likely to go down and up.

Their explanation is all about the social desirability of body shapes. While men are thought to be undesirable both when they are too thin and too fat, a larger man, within the bounds of a healthy weight, is accorded more respect in the workplace. In contrast, for women, being actively thin is most socially desired and best rewarded.