ROCKPORT — Career satisfaction and success don’t just happen. They are the product of a process that people experience over time.

The most recent Society of Human Resource Development job satisfaction survey indicates that 81 percent of U.S. workers in 2013 reported overall satisfaction with their present employment, unchanged from the previous year.

That means that one in five of us state openly that they don’t like what we’re doing. While many careers will make the occupant utterly despondent, others stymie or limit the ability of the individual to achieve true satisfaction. People who haven’t benefited from the services of a professional career counselor are left to their own devices, and the results can be wide-ranging.

Few have learned the warning signals of career dissatisfaction and failure or the corrective measures that can get them past these challenges. In other words, we learn the things that will lead to sickness and death, but little about what may make our lives miserable.

Increasingly, our nation is paying greater attention to mental wellness, but not sufficiently tying that wellness to the workplace. The result is that too many make career errors of two varieties – the things we “do wrong” and the things we “don’t do,” both likely to have a significant impact on career satisfaction and our emotional well-being.

Career development parallels human growth and development, and represents a series of unique experiences that define the entire life. Our ability to understand what is happening or will happen can determine the degree to which we can guide or control (be proactive) or mend and fix (be reactive) what is occurring in our work lives.

As one passes through life, career development involves experiencing a series of eight stages: self-awareness; exploration; goal-setting; decision-making; knowledge/skill acquisition and competency attainment; job orientation, entry and adjustment; growth, mobility and maintenance; and finally, wind-down, adjustment and exit. Sounds complex, I realize, but like most of our life transitions, each stage is manageable, if we know it is occurring. The problem is – most don’t.

A major consideration about this series of career development stages is that they seldom occur in linear, one-stop-and-move-on fashion. As each individual ages and matures, different interests, achievements, preferences and values emerge. The man who started working in his 20s may be markedly different from the person he will be when he reaches 30-something. And as retirement draws near, the initial characteristics may not be recognizable.

Beyond knowing that your career follows a series of stages, it’s important to know any errors can be classified into identifiable behaviors – things we need to monitor and manage to ensure our personal needs are met. These errors are typically manifested in the following:

• You lack quality information. What are you doing to keep abreast of changes in your current work and what signals are your antennae picking up about new careers?

• You’re working with inferior tools and behaviors. How sharp are the tools (i.e., resume, cover letter, etc.) and strategies (i.e., job identification tactics, interview techniques, social media strategies, etc.) that you are using in the exploration, decision-making and job-seeking process?

• You fail to learn from both good and faulty decisions. Are you learning from prior decisions or just crossing your fingers hoping for the best?

• Your timing is atrocious. Choosing a career, finding a job or growing in one’s career should be planned events. What have you done to prepare for, transition into, move about and evaluate the career events of your life?

• You are unsuccessful at managing or controlling the career development process. If you don’t want to be locked into the same position for the next decade, what steps are you taking to grow and advance? If your job were to suddenly disappear (i.e., downsizing, termination, etc.), how equipped are you to recover?

• You fail to use the people positioned to help you. Licensed and certified professional counselors in schools, colleges, agencies and community service organizations, along with competent recruiters and staffing professionals, exist to help you. Are you utilizing their services?

Errors will not disappear. Albert Einstein once said: “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” Some of the errors you will make or have already made will be your best teachers. Learn from them. Career satisfaction and success, however, will have a better taste if you make fewer errors and know how to remedy those that you do.

— Special to the Press Herald

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