Career Success and Career Satisfaction: Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives

‘How can I ensure that I am ‘successful’ in my career?’

This question is one that is often at the forefront of students’ minds as they take their first steps from degree to job market. You could probably guess without even reading this blog post that there is no one thing that you can do to guarantee success in your career.

But where can you start?

Theoretical Foundations

A framework set out by Singh, Ragins and Tharenou (2009) can help us to answer this question. The authors argue that an individual’s Career Success is influenced by that person’s ‘career capital’. ‘Career capital’ is defined as the resources that an individual has within themselves and their relationships.

There are two main forms of career capital: individual career capital and relational career capital.

Individual forms of career capital include human capital, such as education and prior work experience, and agentic capital, which refers to the extent to which an individual proactively engages in behaviours to facilitate their own career progression.

Relational forms of career capital include mentoring relationships and developmental network capital. The latter refers to the network of people you develop throughout your career, for example, current and former coworkers will be part of your ‘developmental network’. You can leverage either or both of these relationships to advance your career.

Numerous studies conducted prior to this one revealed that individuals with mentors achieve more positive career outcomes than those without. This, the authors argue, gave rise to the pretty oversimplified assumption that mentoring is a prerequisite for career success: so, to answer the original question, having a mentor is the key to career success.

Unfortunately, like any interesting question, the answer isn’t quite that simple.

As argued by the authors, it is crucial to remember that the different forms of career capital do not act alone, but rather interact with and build on one another, meaning that the positive impacts cannot necessarily be attributed to just one source of capital.

For example, certain individual characteristics like proactivity might make someone more inclined to seek out and obtain relational forms of career capital, like searching for a mentor. This effect works the opposite way: for example, a relational form of career capital may influence somebody’s agentic capital - a mentor could encourage their mentee to become more ‘proactive’ in seeking out opportunities.

The authors found out that:

• human capital (education, training, development) is just about the only predictor of salary

• mentoring had the biggest impact on promotion and advancement expectations, more so than human capital and developmental network capital

• mentoring had little effect on career satisfaction

The conclusion that the authors reached was that mentoring, although incredibly useful, cannot and should not be expected to ‘do it all’; it should instead complement the other individual and relational career resources that a person builds throughout their lifetime, all of which will influence career success.

The way they describe it is that mentoring is just one part of a ‘constellation’ of career resources. This demonstrates that the key to career success is developing a range of career resources that incorporate both individual and relational types of career capital.

Mapping your way to career success

So, with this idea of a ‘constellation’ in mind, I suggest that you take out a piece of paper and draw a literal ‘constellation’ in the form of a mind map, taking note of all all career capital that you have right now. After that, group them into individual and relational forms (maybe by colour-coding), and then further categorise them into human, agentic, mentoring and developmental network capital. Count the number of items you have under each category.

Once you’ve made this constellation, it’s time to get things a bit more organised.

If you notice that any one form of capital is lacking, think of ways that you could build that form of capital.

For example, if you lack human capital, you could train a new skill, such as a new language or a new technology or software.

If you lack relational network capital, try getting back in touch with former coworkers or classmates, or improving your relationships with existing coworkers or classmates. LinkedIn is a great (and low-stakes!) way to get started on this.

And: if you don’t have a mentor, now would be a good time to start looking for one.

A great way of translating this more abstract ‘constellation’ mind-map into more targeted action is through a table. Take a look at the example below:

Now that you’ve got a sense of what your final product might look like, I recommend that you complete your own table by filling out the PDF template attached to the bottom of this blog post. Happy planning!

‘…but can’t I be happy in my work too?’

This secondary question is unfortunately absent from a lot of career planning resources, and is treated as an afterthought or a bonus in day-to-day discussions of work. However, satisfaction, pride and overall mental wellbeing in work is important to prevent burnout and enable long-term happiness.

A possible answer to how to find a career that enables this lies in the Japanese philosophy of ikigai (lit: ‘reason for being’). Originally, ikigai was regarded as balancing three elements:

1. Doing what you love;

2. Doing what you are good at; and

3. Doing something that the world needs.

However, as we’ve seen from the ever-increasing popularity of ‘fusion’ restaurants in the 2000-2010s and all the weird and wonderful variations of sushi that have resulted, Westerners really seem to love making additions to established Japanese practices to cater to Western tastes. Ikigai is no exception; the fourth element, ‘what you can earn money from’, is one such Western addition. But because we all need to pay rent, to eat, to clothe ourselves and so on, it is a practical reality in career decisions that can’t be overlooked. And logically, if your basic needs are met, your life satisfaction will already be better than if they were not.

Conceptualizing ikigai as a Venn diagram, as the graphic above has done, is also a Western practice, but it is one that aids our understanding of what this philosophy is all about and makes it more transferable for career planning purposes. A blank template version of this diagram, with some career-specific additions, is attached to this blog post as a PDF for you to fill out in your own time.

Work cited: Singh, R., Ragins, B. and Tharenou, P., 2009. What matters most? The relative role of mentoring and career capital in career success. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 75(1), pp.56-67.

Templates: