Introduction. How to Measure your Human Capital Value, and Why you Should.
Most career paths are trial and error.
The concept of a career is supposed to represent an exciting journey that, in the end, tells a story of one’s hopes and dreams. But as a 12-year practitioner of career consulting, I have discovered that for millions of people, this is simply not the case. In fact, what I observe most often is that most people are suffering from not just career issues, but personal issues that stem from frustrations obtaining these dreams. The pursuit and failure of career goals often leads to depression, self-esteem issues, and relationship problems. This is why having a strong career plan, and making good career choices are so important.
Over the years, most of my clients have come to see me only after they are dealing with major personal and professional issues. Very few people are proactive about career development, and mainly because it is not taught in junior high or high schools. Similar to how financial planning is something most people must learn the hard way. As a practitioner of workplace psychology. I have always asked myself a simple question. “Are career problems causing personal issues, or is it the other way around?” Considering that the average adult spends about 33% of their life at work (close to 100,000 hours), it’s obvious that one’s career satisfaction or lack thereof, affects all other aspects of life satisfaction.
For most people today, the traditional career is dead. Therefore, traditional models of career consulting are no longer relevant. Institutions have changed drastically over the past 20 years, that even the most intelligent, well-educated, and hard-working Americans struggle to establish security. The purpose of this introductory article is to present a better way of handling the turbulence people now experience in the world of work. If you were looking for advice about your resume, interviewing, or salary negotiations, that’s the easy stuff. This is what I consider traditional career consulting. My free subscribers will have access to this information, and I will attempt to reply directly to all chats and comments.
My assessment on the current world of work.
I am a practitioner of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (I/O Psychology). Industrial and Organizational psychologists make up only about 3% of the psychological community. I/O's do not deal with any sort of clinical diagnosis. Instead, they focus on a lost phrase in the workplace called “human capital”. The discipline of I/O is becoming increasingly rare. I would say that it is a lost art, but to be precise, it’s a lost science. The field of I/O has been around for about 100 years and has been mostly used in the military and in fortune 500 corporations. My interest as a practitioner is to help my followers and subscribers focus on their Human Capital potential. If we were to examine who someone is through the lens of psychology, I/O’s are experts in identifying talent and potential in people, then helping them apply it to career goals.
Now we cannot ignore that life is complex. There are major macro-level factors effecting American jobs, it is obvious that the American workplace is becoming increasingly problematic. This month alone, we had job openings fall to the lowest level since 2021, and we had economic data showing that most job openings in the past year are going to illegal aliens. In fact, the data in the article shows the “Stunning statistic: there has been zero increase in jobs for native-born workers in over five years, since July 2018!”
HR departments have become increasingly misguided about talent. They literally have no clue how to quantify a candidate or employees worth, and nor do they care to waste resources on it. They care about organizational objectives. Most companies view employees as a financial liability. This would not be the case if they knew how to utilize workers properly, but they do not. They struggle with the concept of human capital. Most companies don’t invest in people unless it is for the benefit of internal goals. Unfortunately, many companies today think finding talent is as simple as virtue signaling their diversity, equity and inclusion agendas.
HR focuses on the wrong things. For instance, how would a company identify where you fit into open positions when they don’t know how to properly write a job description? The average selection process of resume reviews and interviews show horrible statistical reliability in selecting people who perform in the role. In fact, meta-analysis research shows that the average company has an interview process that is less reliable than flipping a coin. Yet most people allow these so called “authorities” to dictate their future. Job seekers today would have as good of a success rate or better simply flipping a coin as they would allowing a company to determine their employment status.
Furthermore, according to the Gallup organization, workplace engagement is at an 11 year low. This means that productivity, employee retention, and quality of work are also trending lower. The trend shows that the younger the employee, the less engaged they are at work. This is a serious issue that hardly anyone is addressing. Companies are no longer loyal to their employees, and in return, employees are no longer loyal to them. According to a report regarding the revised jobs numbers for March of 2024, All job gains in the federal data were part time jobs. This is not quality employment. This is under-employment. Working part-time in low-skilled, low-wage positions does not lead to a financially stable or content life. Many people recall that their parents only worked 1-2 jobs in their lifetimes. But now the average person is expected to work 12 jobs in their lifetime.
Gallup also reported in their 2023 “State of the Global Workforce” study that 52% of Americans experience stress daily at work, and 18% experience daily anger. 47% of employed people in the United States are actively seeking a new job. While these statistics change based upon gender and job role, these are concerning symptoms of a broken world in the American workforce. These are also issues that those who study human behavior in the workplace should be addressing. Not only are people checked out, but most young people have very unrealistic career goals to begin with. Take a look at this YouGov study.
The solution - Invest in yourself.
Career seekers need to think differently. To stress my point, when was the last time an organization invested in you? Not your position; you as an individual. Has anyone taken the time to learn your talents are or what you have interests in? I recently saw someone on LinkedIn post that their boss told them that they should take a new position even though they would not receive a pay increase, but that they should do it because they will “learn new things”. Unacceptable, and I hope this person denied the “offer”. For these reasons, it’s clear that people who are serious about careers and career development need more than just advice about your resume, interviewing, or salary negotiations.
“But wait” you may be saying. Aren’t Institutions trusted authority figures? Shouldn’t we cooperate with them since they are the gatekeepers of our futures? My suggestion is to eliminate that type of thinking. You should be as skeptical of them as they are about you. As a practitioner of individual behavior in the workplace, my role is to help my clients become the ultimate authority about career decisions. Taking responsibility regarding career issues will empower you to know your workplace value better than any employer ever can. When you know your true self-worth, you are less likely to be taken advantage of, and know when you are being improperly or properly utilized in the workplace. Those who know what they are most likely to be successful at, and perhaps most importantly, what they are capable of achieving hold the key to career self-actualization.
How to measure your human capital worth
Today’s career seekers must be adaptable. Flexible and able to adjust to factors outside their control. Career seekers should become as unaffected as possible by the chaotic and ever-changing macro factors happening around them. Interest rate changes, wars, laws that affect businesses, artificial intelligence, pandemics and so on. And not if, but when chaos comes, you must be able to adapt. The only way to do this is through developing confidence in your human capital value. Knowing your work-related competencies and knowing how to apply them in various work contexts. So, lets dig in on step 1 of knowing your worth.
Work-related competencies are made up of 4 components with several sub-components known as KSAO’s (knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics). To help you understand them, pull out your resume. You are going to conduct a self-assessment. If you know your KSAO’s well enough, you will know that there is not just one job or career that you can be successful with, but many. Competencies are made up of 4 work-related domains, and an almost endless number of sub-domains. To have value in the world of work, regardless of what you do, self-employed or not, you must demonstrate the following to achieve success:
1.Knowledge – A collection of facts and information about any given topic or domain. You can have procedural knowledge, tact knowledge, or declarative knowledge. Knowledge often is most closely related to skills and have been learned throughout your life in different ways. All forms of knowledge are valuable. What do you have specific knowledge of? Write down at least 5 unique areas of knowledge you have.
2. Skills – Practiced acts such as computer programs or shooting a basketball. Many people today work jobs that require “people skills”, like the ability to persuade others. While this may come more easily for some depending on personality, all skills require practice. Because all skills require you to practice them, you should value them. It’s time you spent on yourself. Therefore, demand that employers value them as well. What do you have skills in? Write down at least 5 unique skills you have.
3. Abilities – Represent what you are capable of achieving. Some abilities involve perception and motor skills such as coordination. This can also involve things such as oral comprehension, selective attention, and oral expression. Organizations who care about abilities most often measure them through intelligence or cognitive assessments. Many jobs such as becoming an engineer require comprehension, problem-solving, or general intelligence. These types of assessments measure what you are capable of achieving. What do you have the ability to achieve? It’s likely not on your resume because your resume represents your past. Write down at least 5 unique abilities you have.
4. “Other” personal characteristics – Refers primarily to your personality preferences, and interests, but depending on context (position or job description) could involve other desirable and quantifiable traits. Personality is a great measurement of intrinsic motivation, and you should always spend time in positions that match your personality traits. Your personality represents the daily behaviors that come naturally to you, so you should want to fit your career around your personality. Valid personality assessments measure what people are most likely to do. Everyone should build a career on the things they are most likely to do and the things that come natural to them. As Jordan Peterson once said, “Match your occupation to your temperament. Not the other way around”. Write down 5 unique personality traits you have, and how they relate to your career.
If you are interested in taking a personality assessment, I highly recommend being careful on the internet. There are more fake assessments out there than there are quality assessments. Most quality assessments can only be administered by qualified practitioners, and you should take it seriously. Before taking any personality assessment you find, please click here and type the name of the personality assessment in the search box. If it does not return any results, this means that the creator did not publish any work to the psychological (psychometric) community, and that no peers in the field have evaluated it. Do not make decisions based on poor information! Contact me, as I am certified in over 100 peer-reviewed assessments, and I specialize in the interpretation of the most valid and reliable personality assessment on earth known as the NEO Personality Assessment.
Lastly, the things that people are interested in can naturally lead to career stability and satisfaction. This is because the things that one is most interested in become the things they excel at, and ultimately can become experts in. I use interests to verify personality scores. If you have never assessed yourself, you can go to this Department of Labor funded site to take a quick, valid interest assessment. This assessment will tell people where other’s who scored similarly have already found career success. Below is a quick visual of what the Interest Profiler measures. Ask yourself where you can fit your interests within the current needs of the workplace. If you don’t know, I can help. When done, write down 5 interests you have, and then relate them to your assessment results.
Congratulations! You completed step 1 of knowing your human capital worth! How many competencies did you write down? If it is less than 25, you are probably leaving money on the table. Now count how many K’s, S’s, A’s, an O’s are on your resume. If you don’t have at least 5 for each competency, you are likely getting paid less than you could be. Your KSAO’s represent your human capital worth. Every single K, S, A, and O can be quantified and translated into a monetary value.
This is a real quantification of your human capital worth. All your KSAO’s combined are known as your work-related competencies. If you have less than 25, don’t be discouraged. Very few people (even my prior “C level” clients) knew how to quantify KSAO’s. The point of the exercise is to show that you have more workplace value than you realized.
Measuring your individual attributes is necessary for all types of career success. If you are seeking self-employment, knowing your KSAO’s is detrimental. That said, if you have considered carving your own path, I’ve also developed another publication dedicated to self-employment and entrepreneurship based upon this KSAO model. If not, this Substack publication is dedicated to building upon this initial post, and helping subscribers develop their KSAO’s into career self-actualization.
This introduction article hopefully helps readers understand the foundation of my work. Free subscribers will have access to all my notes and content related to traditional career consulting such as resume tips, job hunting strategies, interviewing techniques, and articles on relevant workplace trends. Paid subscribers receive detailed access to topics such as leadership development, articles on accessing and applying your personality and interests to your career, psychological principals of success, and random discussions on applying Jordan Petersons work to your career goals (because I am a huge fan!) I hope you choose to join me in this unique approach to obtaining career opportunities. My passion is providing practical, implementable exercises career seekers can take to make measurable changes towards goals obtainment.
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