Plugging the Donut Hole

We humans are complicated beings. We have many wonderful attributes and, unfortunately, at least a couple that are less than wonderful. Among the latter are two that, in large measure, determine our success (or lack therefore) as academicians and educators: we are easily distracted and occasionally disorganized.

The negative impact of those two traits on an individual's academic credentialing and classroom or office performance has long been recognized in higher education. All of us understand that a lack of focus and useful structure will almost certainly degrade both our own acquisition of knowledge and the caliber of teaching or administrative support we provide to our students.

What's often not appreciated, however, is the impact those same two traits will have on the course and content of our career. If we are distracted or disorganized in its management -- if we do not attend to its care on a regular basis or if we care for it in a haphazard way -- we will likely experience the same dysfunction and diminished outcome, but in our employment. To put it more bluntly, if we let our career skills grow flabby, we are the perfect candidate for career cardiac arrest, or what most of us call unemployment.

Unfortunately, cultural mores and conventional wisdom make it easy to miss that fact. From our earliest days, we're counseled and taught that a college degree is the only necessary ticket to opportunity, and the higher the degree, the greater the potential for success. Whether you're on the faculty or staff, that parchment puts you on your way and keeps you progressing.

While that may have been the case prior to the Great Recession, however, it is clearly not so today. And, the evidence of this new normal is legion. There are now large numbers of Americans holding bachelor's and master's degrees and even Ph.D.s who are unemployed and unable to mount a successful job search. They have fallen through the "donut hole" in higher education.

Our institutions have taken them through a rigorous pedagogy in a branch of knowledge or an occupational field, and left them without a similar foundation in the skills and knowledge of career self-management. Our colleges and universities have made them experts in their chosen discipline and dilettantes in putting that knowledge to work.

The Career Fitness regimen is designed to remediate that shortcoming. It provides both a foundation of proven principles and a superstructure of "best practices" that together comprise a comprehensive methodology for achieving and maintaining career success. It enables a person to be systematic, professional and conscientious in negotiating the challenges and tapping the opportunities of the modern workplace. In essence, it provides a pathway for becoming as expert in the direction of our career as we are in the development of our knowledge.

Thanks for reading,
Peter