Your invaluable career companion
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Become ‘employable’ than
being ‘employed’
Being ‘employed’ is a secured state of ‘today’ with
an unknown state of ‘tomorrow’. Possessing one’s
own competency and continuously developing
new competencies makes a person ‘employable’.
An ‘employable’ always has new opportunities
even during economic recession and tough times
says M R Chandramowly.
D
irector: Hi John, please
take a seat. Trust all is
well with you. Now, you
see, I don’t have much
good news to offer in this
performance review.
John: er! Why Sir? What happened?
My team has done great, I have done
my best and my last 3 years of perform-
ance rating is excellent and...
Director: That’s true. But you
know that the individual ratings are
one and the standard based ratings are
different. In the comparative appraisal
rating system, I am afraid; your ratings
may slip down to average.
John: Oh (worried), well then (re-
positions), please let me know Sir,
which are those areas and how I can
improve? I will certainly try my best.
Director: It could be a fair point but
things are moving in different direc-
tion Dear John. However, we have
these learning capability curves you
know; the research proves that as a
man gets older his learning capability
drops.
John: It is not true Sir, at least in my
case. You know about how I learnt
those new packages and systems. And
it is going fine with me and I can learn
any newer things......
Director: So it is, but that is not the
point Mr John. How should I tell you?
Have you heard of Lee Strasberg? He
was a famous acting teacher who ones
said “I can train you for anything ex-
cept that for which you have no talent.”
It makes more sense to re-hone your
core skills in transforming in to a new
competency than trying to improve the
areas in which you have no talent.
John: Then, what is it Sir? Please
tell me which of the skills I need to en-
hance.
Director: It is a mix of many Mr
John. Actually the emerged decision is
different. We do not need a highly paid
manager to run this function. We are
not meeting our EVA target you know?
So, we have to review and reduce man
power.
John: But, this is an important ac-
tivity for the business. I and my team
have proved it time and again. Our best
performance and....
Director: Listen, Mr John. You
must know this. We have decided to
outsource your area of activity to an
outside company and unfortunately,
we no longer need your services, effec-
tive immediately. (John walks away
silently to his cabin)
John could be any one of us if we
are not ‘employable’. While being em-
ployed is desirable, many professionals
are now realising that it is better to be
employable.
Losing a job!
‘Employed’ status is a not a perpetu-
al state. Low performers carry the risk
of becoming unemployed, when they
fall out of smart sizing exercises like
the one happened in John’s organisa-
tion. This is true in all business situa-
tions and not limited to any specific
sector.
If a business falls short of their
EVA target, the ‘compensation’ gets ad-
justed with a linkage to variable pay
which finally linked to performance.
An ‘Employable’ person is not neces-
sarily someone who has a job, but has
potential competencies to become a
performing employee.
Employable people will have quali-
ties which makes them potentially
good for employment. A corollary im-
plies that ‘Employable’ person who is
‘employed’ or not ‘employed’ has no
fear of losing a job!
Employees feel vulnerable at all lev-
els with the Scandals such as Enron
and WorldCom which shadowed on the
trust on senior management, rightly
practiced Lean Management initia-
tives or Salary and Job cuts being an-
nounced more and more.
It is time to take control and learn to
live in change. With the diminishing
era of predictivity giving way to sur-
prises, a situation of ‘business as usu-
al’ is becoming unusual. Organisations
are looking for individuals who under-
stand this concept and thrive on chaos
and challenges. If one wants to become
more employable there are good deal of
opportunities.
Sustainable employability
Employability means possessing
ones own competency. Competency is
a combination of skill, knowledge, ex-
perience, attitude, values and mo-
tives that can produce significant
performance, adding value to a busi-
ness.
Employability actually deter-
mines a person’s capability to remain
employable for long term. If one
works on his self-awareness, ability
to develop new competencies, self re-
liance and skill to market oneself, he
will become a person with ‘sustain-
able employability’.
Hence, employability simply is
not a one time achievement of pos-
sessing a degree and working for a
company. It is about continued need
to be flexible by re-honing competen-
cies and poses something, which you
can offer to employers.
The good news is that an ‘employ-
able’ always has new opportunities
even during economic recession or at
high unemployment rates. However
one need introspect, identify and de-
velop specific competency and move
ahead with confidence.
Holistic clarity of life
Moving with confidence is a basic
need to cope with change. Confidence
comes from knowledge, experience
and conviction. Conviction emanates
from strong values system and broad-
er perspective of life. Broader per-
spective is an aspect such as believ-
ing that a job is not the end of the
world.
It needs a shift from pea mentality
to abundance mentality, as Stephen
Covey puts it. It is also dangerous to
over focus on learning only voca-
tional skills ignoring avocational tal- continue to lose our discriminative cause of lack of strong skills. A person
ents. power to judge between life at large with strong values but low skills may
We read about suicide cases of post and a critical vertical incident of life. survive some times since he can learn
graduates and highly educated people Our education intensity should not required skills.
who either earn huge sums of money make us nerds deprived of possible In the same way a person with
or have potential to earn even more. winnings, success and joy in the life at strong skills must develop some values
But why don't we hear about suicide large. This bi-focal approach is bedrock or else he will perish. Swami Chin-
cases of an artist, a musician or yoga of courage. mayananda exclaims ‘You must stand
expert whose earning capacity though The Value-Skill matrix is still green for some thing in life or else you will
low? in my memory where Prof S K fall for any thing’
Art, Music or Literature broadens Chakaraborthi, Human Value Founda-
the vision and purpose of life. Unless tion, IIM Calcutta demonstrated in a (To be concluded in part II)
this holistic element is present in us workshop about how powerful the
along with our functional competen- ‘Strong in value’ component compared
cies, we will not have the dynamism to ‘Strong in skills’. Most of the people The author can be reached at E-mail:
and courage to face life challenges and lose their jobs in top level is not be- cmowly@hotmail.com