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Self-Assessing Your Career Situation

What to Do and How to Do It

“Successfully developing your career in a global company requires both a strong sense of self-awareness and self-management,” said Judy Wolfe Zhao, the human resources director for recruitment for Philips Electronics China. “You need to understand where your gaps are and whether you are improving your capabilities in line with the standards and practices of your company. Being closely involved in our company’s management talent development, we notice the differences in the overall development tracks of employees who have few clues as to what they want to do and those who have a clearer idea of what they want and how to get it. Because the latter are more switched-on about where they are in their careers and what is going on around them, they are more able to leverage opportunities that present themselves. Unfortunately, among the mainland staff that I see, these are the rarer ones.”

In reality the things that you should be doing for your career success are never going to be so clearly defined or laid out for you. And there is no single career success model that works, but no matter what your objectives are, you want to at least have a sense of what the next step in your career will be and what it will realistically take to get there. You then want to identify those things that you should be working on now to get what you want.

Where are You Today?

It is easy to appreciate the benefits of having an accurate assessment of where you are in your professional development and the areas in which you need to improve. Yet, most mainland professionals ignore or avoid doing this kind of self-assessment. Instead, they rely almost entirely on their bosses or their companies to monitor their development progress and to identify their professional development needs.

It’s an easy thing to do. If you work in a multinational company, it is likely that you receive outside feedback through semi-annual or annual performance reviews. These reviews usually let you know how well you are performing or meeting the main objectives of your job. They also point out to what extent you are demonstrating desired capabilities and qualities that are important for your career advancement in the organization. Certainly, these reviews are very helpful. But if you are only getting such assessments once or twice a year, think about all the time that is passing by as you wait for others to tell you many of the things that you could be identifying for yourself and working on improving much earlier on. 

“Of course, performance reviews are extremely valuable. But if you have high expectations for your career advancement, then the self-assessment of your capabilities and performance should also be taking place on an ongoing basis,” emphasizes Perry Ching, former director of operations for Oracle Software Systems. “It should be one of your most basic habits for providing yourself with a good sense of your situation and development needs at any point in time.”

Doing an Honest Self-Assessment

Many mainland professionals tend to overestimate their capabilities regarding what is considered outstanding for someone at their career stage. We also see the very differing viewpoints between an organization and its staff regarding readiness to take on higher-level roles and responsibilities in the company. Often, senior managers do not view a particular employee as being mature enough in the key skill sets and qualities that are needed to handle a management-level role, while the employee believes that he or she is. When it comes down to a decision to promote that person or not, guess whose point of view always wins out?

“Actually, there’s nothing wrong with having high expectations and wanting to push your career. Just about every executive that I know likes having ambitious, hardworking employees in their organization,” says John Chan, the author of China Streetsmart. “But your assessment of your situation needs to be in line with the assessment of those who determine your ability to move up into management roles. For many mainland professionals, they need to be more in tune with their company’s expectations and standards for such positions.”

Being Objective and Mature about Your Situation

Any helpful self-assessment has to start with being completely honesty about your situation.  There is no benefit to inflating your view of your capabilities only to find out later on that you are not delivering the level of performance that you think you are or that is expected from you.  That’s not way you want to get that kind of feedback. “What your self-assessments reveal may not always be what you’d like them to,” says Chan. “But it’s absolutely necessary for you to be honest with yourself when assessing your capabilities and performance, and, as importantly, to be mature enough to accept what you find.”

“You have to show maturity towards your career,” says Arthur Zhang, a business manager with Emerson China. “I’ve seen many former peers change jobs just because they didn’t receive a promotion that they felt they should have. They reacted emotionally, feeling that they were not getting the chance that they deserved. Only after they left did they realize that their not getting promoted was not because there was something wrong with the company, but because of the shortcomings in their own capabilities, which they failed to see at the time.”