Career anchors- useful scale to know yourself

By

Meera Uday
Sr. Lecturer
Department of Management Studies
Global Academy of Technology
Bangalore-560098
 

Career anchors- useful scale to know yourself

"THE BEST career advice given to the young is:? Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.?" - Katherine Whitethorn

What are career anchors?

Are you interested in knowing the real you? Do you want to succeed in your professional career? The answers for these questions would definitely be" yes". Then the question arises, how to make it possible? Dr Edgar Schien has proposed the concept of career anchors to emphasise on the strong motivators for success, he states that everyone has one dominant "anchor" and motivator, as it relates to work.

Everyone has different ambition in work life. Some people have very content, quiet and uneventful job while some thrive for constant changes, challenges, experiments and excitement. In short, we are all different, and our motivators are an "internal barometer" of who we are and what we want.

Dr. Schein outlines eight main career anchors:

* Technical/Functional Competence
* General Management Competence
* Autonomy/Independence
* Security/Stability
* Entrepreneurial Creativity
* Service/Dedication to a Cause
* Pure Challenge
* Lifestyle

How do these motivators relate to you? Each and every one of them is a statement of what you want (or don't want). The eight anchors are described as below:

Technical/Functional: Enjoy using core skills; skills don't have to be technical in nature; can be a human resources worker or a secretary and enjoy using the skills needed for those positions; motivated by learning new skills and expanding current knowledge base.

Type of Work: What turns these types on is the exercise of their talent; satisfaction with knowing concepts. If it is not a challenge, technical/functional types feel bored and/or demeaned. Content of actual work more important than the context of the work. In other words, it is the actual work they are concerned with not the organization or the overall mission of their work; teaching and mentoring offers opportunity to demonstrate expertise.

General Managerial Competence: view specialization as limiting; primarily want to manage or supervise people; enjoy motivating, training and directing the work of others; enjoy authority and responsibility, and when someone strips of control it is "demotivator;" thrive in three areas of competence – analytical, interpersonal/intergroup, and emotional.

Type of Work: high levels of responsibility, varied, integrative, leadership.

Autonomy/Independence: need and want control over work and want to be recognized for achievements; can't tolerate other people's rules or procedures; need to do things their own way; independent consulting and contract work would be a good fit for these people; want to be left alone to do their work; just give them instructions on what you want, when you want it and let them "go to it!"

Type of Work: seek autonomous professions such as consulting, teaching, contract or project work, or even temporary work; part or full-time acceptable.

Security/Stability: safe, secure, predictable are buzz words; motivated by calmness and consistency of work; don't like to take chances, and are not risk-takers; stable companies are best bets; strive for predictability, safety, structure, and the knowledge that the task has been completed properly; unused talents may be channeled outside work.

Type of Work: stability and predictability are key; emphasis on context of job rather than content or work (in other words, pay, benefits, work environment most important).

Entrepreneurial Creativity : like the challenge of starting new projects or businesses, have lots of interests and energy, and often have multiple projects going at once; different from autonomy in that the emphasis is on creating new business; often pursuing dreams at early age.

Type of Work: strong need to create something new; bored easily; inventions; restless; constantly seeking new creative outlets.

Service/Dedication to a Cause: motivated by core values rather than the work itself; strong desire to make the world a better place.

Type of Work: high concentration of service-oriented professions, motivated by pursuit of personal values and causes.

Pure Challenge: strongest desire is overcoming obstacles; conquering, problem-solving; competition; winning; constant self-testing; single-minded individuals.

Type of Work: careers where competition is primary.

Lifestyle: have a high need to balance work and the rest of life; enjoy work, but realize that work is just one of many parts of life that are important; subscribe to philosophy of "work to live", rather than "live to work."

Type of Work: careers must be integrated with the rest of life flexibility; desire to work with organizations that accept and promote balance; some individuals unwilling to relocate for reasons of life balance.

Case study

It took a battery of tests for Chetan Shahdeo to know that he was right about the entrepreneurial streak in him.

The 28-year-old electrical engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, who also has a degree in management, works as a process manager at the data analytics and customized process solutions provider eClerx Services Ltd.

To identify his "career anchor", or what interested him most at work, his employers conducted 10 tests that mapped his leadership, decision-making, analytical and problem solving abilities, customer focus, quality and team work skills. The results were then coupled with feedback from his team, his career history and one-on-one interviews with an independent assessee.

"The findings helped me identify that my dominant anchor is entrepreneurial creativity. It also revealed what I am good at and what I am not," Shahdeo says.

He scored high on leadership skills, decision-making and communication, but had a poor focus on quality. "Perhaps the quality bit explains why¥I¥didn't find my 10-month stint at Essar Steel's Hazira plant very fulfilling," he says. The data also equipped him to decide whether he wants to work on his weak areas or play on his strengths.

Shahdeo's seniors acted on cue and deputed him to set up one of the smaller processes for the firm's largest client. After that Shahdeo moved on to sales support function and then to his third role of facilitating the integration process of the newly acquired UK-based supply chain and Web-automation software firm Igentica Ltd. He did all this in the 33 months since he joined the company in March 2005.

Clearly, eClerx's pilot on career anchors involving Shahdeo and other managers, conducted 18 months ago, was successful both in motivating employees and in improving performance. The feedback prompted the firm to set up an assessment centre. "We now have a dedicated 15-member assessment team to look into career development and management," says Kishore Poduri, head, human resources, eClerx Services.

Future scope of research

These are the main career anchors outlined by Schein and measured by his Career Orientations Inventory. In his book he discusses the concept of the career anchor in-depth, raising such thought-provoking questions as:

Are there other career anchors?
Can one have more than one anchor?
Do anchors change? And finally,
How does one match individual needs and those of the organizations?

Conclusion

When embarking on career exploration, the concept of career anchors is just one of many useful self-assessment scales. It is a way of pinpointing who you are and what you want, so you can better define what you are seeking in a job.

References:

1. www.rapidbi.com/created/careeranchors.html
2. www.livemint.com2008/01/13231241/careeranchors
 

Meera Uday
Sr. Lecturer
Department of Management Studies
Global Academy of Technology
Bangalore-560098
 

Source: E-mail June 26, 2009

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