Let’s look at the future and career worry we all go through every 2-3 years from above before we move onto our search for career success and the effect of our visible value in that.

It’s a must to get a higher and more systematical perspective to understand the whole.

Trends and variables we are in and cannot understand clearly show themselves when viewed from above. 

What this view-from-above shows us is that today’s working adult will change approximately 15 jobs during his career. I’ve talked about this before in the article “Why Picking a Job is Similar to Picking a Partner“.

This means 15 important career choices! One needs to stop and think for career success.

It’s vain saying ‘I wish it wasn’t like this’. Now the responsibility of career management is only on the individuals. Companies don’t take this responsibility. They won’t take it in the future as well. They are willing to hire you because your skills of the moment is useful for them. But this is not a guarantee for the future of your career. Company employees become more dispensable and employable as business models change, and as companies become more agile in changing directions.

We know very well that ideally a company needs to make an effort to reach right customer to have a good endorsement. It needs to make an effort to present the product in the right way, show its strengths, and tell what it is a solution for.

I find the sayings “People are products” or “One needs to do self-marketing” lacking and repelling. This is not the case when we look at it philosophically.

But! You need to speak the language of the market if you want to succeed within the framework of societal and commercial norms. And this is the language of the market today. To be more clear; every business’ success depends on their making the right decisions.

To put it in the simplest way; any individual/management/company that is going to hire you is making an investment and taking a risk. When a company is going to make a purchase deal for a software, buy office furniture, open a new branch, take care of an ARGE activity, or add something to the product portfolio for sale; they invest and take risks. The probability of human force being useful is really high, so if their possibility of harming the company. So this is why “hiring” is where they make the most careful decisions and pay the most attention to the risks. This has to be the way within today’s structure.

Wearing a tie is no longer enough to represent yourself correctly and have a good business interview!

We see a much clearer picture when you look at it from the perspective of the other side. This is the other perspective: If the person sitting at the candidate seat and carrying the burden of making a career choice knows his pros and cons clearly and transmits these to the other party in the right way; he increases the chances of the other side having a positive view of him. The other side will view you as an investment and a risk decision.

There are Two Dimensions to Career Success

The first dimension is to work!

Working, putting effort, going to work every morning.

Contemplating, struggling. Going to difficult meetings. Making difficult presentations. Showing cognitive and physical power. Using your creativity in the right way. Solving problems with your technical expertise. Managing human relationships correctly. Managing stress.

And doing all these not just for a day, a week or a month; but for years.

The second dimension is to tell these in the right way.

What goals did you set? Why did you do that job? What is your story? What kind of expertise do you have? Why is it valuable and what is its use in the relevant company? Which problems can you solve? In which areas you are valuable?

What skills do you have that others don’t? Which of your qualities are the strongest? What are the situations,examples, work outcomes you can present to talk about these?

Can you correctly express yourself, your stand, your way of conversing and reasoning?

What is your Visible Value? How does it Relate to Career Success?

Imagine you’re making a purchasing decision. Remember the last item you bought that was over 500 Pounds. Most probably, what got you to buy this item wasn’t a comparison of the item with all its competitors in mathematical and scientific analysis. Reaching all information would be possible only in a perfect world. You made your decision with the limited information you had. If you’re in the minority, you made research and read; if you’re in the majority, you made a reflexive purchasing decision.

You made your decision based on visible information. 

You made your decision by looking at values that were visible to you.

The same goes for when others are making a decision about you. Whether it’s the decision of someone viewing your CV on whether to invite you to an interview, or the manager’s or the HR’s decision on whether to hire you; they don’t have perfect information either. They make their decisions based on what they can see.

Now I’ll share with you the formula for this visible value.

Visible Value = (Effort + Experience + Skills) X Your Capacity of Representing Your Value

Two Important Conclusions for Career Success;

1. If your (Effort + Experience + Skills) is nonexistent, or close to zero; the zero element gets into effect in the multiplication. Your visible value is close to zero. No matter how good you “market” yourself, how well you express yourself; it is very unlikely that you’ll get a positive result.
2. If the situation is the opposite, thus your (Effort + Experience + Skills) is high in total but your capacity of representing your value is zero or close to zero; the result will be the same. Your visible value is close to zero.

In summary, you need to both invest in yourself and develop the skills of getting this across and representing it effectively for your Visible Value to be high.

In today’s world, you don’t have the chance of focusing on only one and ignoring the other. At least if you want to have a rising career line.