HRM

1. Fundamentals of
Human Resource
Management
Chapter 9:
Managing Careers

2.  HRM representatives, to have competent and motivated people
to fill the organization’s future needs, should be increasingly
concerned with matching employee career needs with the
organization’s requirements.
 Years ago, career development programs were designed to assist
employees in advancing their work lives. HRM provided
information and assessments to help employees realize their
career goals. Career development help organizations attract and
retain talented personnel.
 But today, due to the dynamic work environment (downsizing,
restructuring, re-engineering, globalization, contingent workers,
and so forth), employees become responsible for their careers. It
is not the organization’s obligation.

3. The Organization’s Responsibility
 The organization’s responsibility is to build employees self-
reliance and to help them maintain their marketability
through continual learning.
 The essence is to provide support so employees can
continually add to their skills, abilities, and knowledge.
 This support includes:
1. Communicating clearly the organization’s goals and future strategies.
2. Creating growth opportunities.
3. Offering financial assistance.
4. Providing the employees the time to learn.

4. Career
 The term career refers to the sequence of
positions that a person has held over his/her
life span.
 We all have careers.
 Career success is defined not only objectively,
in terms of promotion, but also subjectively,
in terms of satisfaction.

5. Career from Individual versus
Organizational Perspective
 Organizational Perspective
 Career development involves tracking career paths and developing
career ladders.
 HRM seeks information to direct and to monitor the progress of
special groups of employees, and to ensure that capable professional,
managerial, and technical talents will be available to meet
organizational needs.
 It is called organizational career planning.
 Employee Perspective
 Individual career development, or career planning, focuses on
assisting individuals to identify their major goals and how to achieve
them.
 It addresses each individual’s personal work career and other lifestyle
issues.

6. Career Development versus
Employee Development
 They differ in:
 Career development looks at the long-term career
effectiveness and success of organizational personnel.
 Employee development focuses on the work
effectiveness or performance in the immediate or
intermediate time frames.
 They are linked in:
 Both should be compatible with an individual's career
development in the organization.

7. Career Development:
Value for the Organization
 A long-term career focus increases the organization’s
effectiveness in managing human resources.
 Positive results:
 Needed talent will be available.
 The organization’s ability to attract and retain talented
employees improves.
 Minorities and women have comparable opportunities for
growth and development.
 Reduced employee frustration.
 Enhanced cultural diversity.
 Organizational goodwill.

8. Career Development:
Value for the Individual
 Career success is no longer measured in terms of employee’s income or hierarchal
level in the organization. It includes using one’s skills and abilities to face
expanded challenges, or having greater responsibilities and increased autonomy in
one’s chosen profession, and interesting and meaningful work.
 Careers are both external and internal.
 External career
 It involves properties or qualities of an occupation or an organization. It may also be
characterized by career ladders within a particular organization.
 Individual career encompasses many aspects: accumulation of external symbols of success,
definition of occupational types, long-term commitment to a particular occupation, a series of
work-related positions and work-related attitudes and behaviors.
 Intrinsic career
 Both personal relationships and family concerns are of intrinsic value to employees.
 It also includes the subjective and internal valuation of success.
 This differentiate of external from internal is important to the manager who wants
to motivate employees.

9. Mentoring and Coaching
 Mentoring or coaching is actively guiding another individual.
 The effective coach, usually a senior employee, gives guidance through direction, advice, criticism, and
suggestions in an attempt to aid the employee’s growth.
 In other words, through this support system the coach/mentor shares his/her experience with the protégé,
providing guidance of how to make it in the organization.
 The mentor vouches for the candidate.
 The mentor answers for the candidate in the highest circles within the organization.
 The mentor makes appropriate introductions.
 The mentor advices and guides the candidate on how to effectively move through the system.
 The advantage of this technique is learning by doing; there is the opportunity for high interaction and
rapid feedback.
 The disadvantages are: (1) its tendencies to perpetuate the current styles and practices in the organization,
and (2) its heavy reliance on the coach’s ability to be a good teacher.
 Coaching of employees can occur at any level and can be most effective when the two individuals have
no type of reporting relationship but share other similarities in their perspectives.
 Coaches can be co-workers or people external to the organization.
 Coaching is affected by the glass ceiling.

10. Traditional Career Stages
 Exploration
 It is a career stage that usually ends in the mid-twenties as one makes the transition from school to work.
 Establishment
 It is a career stage in which one begins to search for a job and finds a first job. It includes accepting your job,
being accepted by peers, learning the job, and gaining first evidence of success or failure in the real world. It is
dominated by two problems: finding a niche and making a mark.
 Mid-career
 It is a career stage marked by continuous improvement in performance, leveling-off in performance, or
beginning deterioration in performance.
 Plateaued mid-career refers to stagnation in one’s current job. (They are still highly productive employees, but
may be they are not ambitious or aggressive).
 Late career
 It is a career stage in which individuals are no longer learning about their jobs nor expected to outdo levels of
performance from previous years.
 Decline (Late stage)
 It is the final stage in one’s career, usually marked by retirement.
 Review exhibit 9-2 page 230.
 Review exhibit 9-1 page 229.

11. Career Choices and Preferences
 Personality-Job Fit 

12. Enhancing Your Career
 Proactive Personality: describing those individuals who are
more prone to take actions to influence their environment.
 To have a successful career, maintain flexibility, and keep
skills and knowledge up-to-date.
 Successful Career Tips:
 Know yourself.
 Manage your reputation.
 Build and maintain network contacts.
 Keep current.
 Balance your specialist and generalist competencies.
 Document your achievements.
 Keep your options open.