40 +/- 3

40 plus or minus 3, what? The most interesting word that follows 3 must be years. Here is the reason. The greatest and most profound questions that executives, managers and professionals ask themselves about career and about life occur typically between the ages of 37 and 43. This is a natural midpoint not just in one's career but also in one's life. Questions of how am I doing? Am I successful? ? Why is it that my peers appear to be doing better than me? Why do I feel my career is stalling? I am doing great and doing well but why does it feel empty? How should I define success?

As an executive search consultant who has worked in North America, across Asia, Australia and Europe as well as across multiple industries, including Energy, Industrial and Technology, my experience is that the deepest and often most agonizing questions typically plague executives, some a few years before they hit the Big 40 and for others a few years after. Not many escape totally unscathed, or forever.

It is also true that many executives switch companies and employers during this time in their lives. As inflection points emerge in career development, executives often have to battle difficult decisions by themselves. They may have the benefit of wise counsel from a mentor if they are lucky enough to have a mentor or coach but many executives don't. Where they don't, who or what could help these executives? The discipline of Career Calibration can help in this case but how?

Career Calibration provides a rigorous framework that guides executives in designing the right career objective in the appropriate context of life stage, and to then co-develop with the Career Calibration Advisor (CCA) the best strategy to get there.

The Career Calibration process is based on a full understanding of the executive's background, career history, career trajectory, strengths, potential and areas of development (all the elements of a “career balance sheet”), recent history of performance reviews, discussions about potential next steps in the current role as well an inventory of psychometric tests that provide a thorough understanding of the executive's work preferences, strengths, potential, motivations, career aspirations and considerations of work life balance.

The CCA with executive search experience, is able to uniquely guide an executive through the complexity of career road mapping. In the process, the client gets a sense of where they stand relative to the best athlete talent in the market. The client slows down to truly understand and define what his or her "career true north" is. Once this is aligned with the client's suite of strengths, competencies, skills and career momentum, the selected career strategy can be clearly articulated, and implemented. In this way, the Career Calibration can help clients navigate, course-correct and accelerate careers and especially so when a client feels they might have hit the wall in their career progression.

TERRY CHUAH
May 19, 2014