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Success Factors for Career Design – what really matters

Mark Tully

You are facing extraordinary futures, filled with change and disruption but also providing you with unimaginable opportunities. Just one picture of the unpredictable nature of you futures: nearly 50% of the jobs that will make up the economy of the 2030’s don’t exist today.

There’s one thing that won’t change, one very important thing, and it won’t change because it is a core truth of the human condition: you will perform at your best, and enjoy doing it the most—leading to your most sustainable financial success—when the tasks you are called upon to do at your jobs frequently rely on and regularly apply your naturally predisposed behaviors.

If you are naturally analytical, for instance, you will perform better and enjoy it more when the job is defined by analytical tasks. If you are naturally a collaborator, when your job calls upon you to work regularly as a team member you will go home refreshed from getting in a day of work you truly enjoyed. There is a range of other behavior preferences, and you will be most fulfilled when the jobs you fill throughout your career call upon those preferences.
Neuroscience has determined that when we are engaged in using our naturally predisposed preferred behaviors our brain’s performances will be optimized. Our brains will be most ready to be challenged, most eager to learn, most adaptive and resilient: our brains are their most creative.

And our brains are less anxious, less susceptible to stress.

Businesses have long prioritized their hiring decisions on their consideration of the potential employees’ qualifications, like education and experience. It is easier to measure those factors and so we convinced ourselves they are most important.

It is increasingly clear that the best predictors of your success at a new job are behavioral—do you enjoy doing the tasks and activities that the job more frequently calls upon you to do.
43% of success prediction are eligibility factors: qualification, experience, skills and the interview.

50% of success prediction are suitability factors: the match of the behaviors, aptitudes and work environment between the needs of the work
and the candidate.

Eligibility factors are often the ‘entry-ticket’ into a job and career. Suitability factors determine performance and satisfaction.

Consider a job to be a collection of tasks and activities undertaken to different degrees of repetition and routine. The variety and the importance of each task and activity, and the intensity with which they are required—their frequency and duration—in order to perform to a high standard requires a combination of specific behavior preferences. You might regard this as the behavioral DNA of a job, and companies are getting smarter at applying this understanding in their hiring.

So then it’s simple: the closer the match between your naturally predisposed behavior preferences and the behavioral demands of the job, the higher the level of performance.

To underscore the importance of behavior in career choice and workplace performance, here is a characterization of the consequences of a career decision, where there is a behavioral match to the job, and where there is not a behavioral match.

Good match with the behavioral needs of the job
  • The behaviors sculpted in the brain are the ones being used: the brain is working in its natural state. 
  • Motivation is high: the brain is working the way it likes to work doing tasks that call on the most developed neural circuitry. 
  • Likely to be seen as a high performer, recognized, and rewarded accordingly.
  • In the face of setbacks, this person will persevere because there is fulfilment in the work and challenge represents opportunity.
  • The working day flies by, energy remains high.
  • This person can grow in the role and find career opportunities inside the same company: they are regarded as a high performer.
Poor match with the behavioral needs of the job
  • The brain needs to work harder to produce behaviors less well developed, resulting in mental fatigue.
  • Motivation is low. The activities in the job are less appealing and feel like hard work, leading to frustration and lack of fulfillment.
  • Likely to be seen as an average to low performer, and not ‘fitting-in’.
  • In the face of setbacks, this person will give up quickly.
  • The working day drags by and energy drains.
  • This person will develop and advance less, is likely to seek career opportunities outside the company.
So what can you do about this?
Two things for sure.
1. Be mindful of the way you like to do school work and consider the sorts of hobbies and after school activities you enjoy, and start to build a useful picture of the naturally predisposed behavior preferences you identify. This is an on-going examination—you’ll understand better the more you consider how your preferred behaviors show up over a range of activities.

As your examination continues we recommend that you write about your preferred behaviors under headings like ‘How I like to work’ and ‘Why I like to behave the way I like to behave’ and ‘How I feel when I do a task the way I like to do it’.

The better you understand your naturally predisposed preferred behaviors the better you will get at finding ways to express them.
And ask your parents, or a close friend, to help you examine your naturally predisposed behaviors preferences; their different perspectives will often help you see aspects of your behavior preferences you might be missing.

2. Start thinking about the work you want to do through the lens of your naturally predisposed behavior preferences.
One useful resource is the O.net website. It is maintained by the US Dept of Labor and is the most complete database of all the nearly 1,000 jobs that make up the US economy. Each of those jobs includes a detailed list of the sorts of tasks and duties the job calls on during its performance. As you come to understand your behavior preferences better you can review these jobs and identify those that call upon your preferences.

About the author.
Mark Tully is co-founder of the Making a Life institute. Our mission is to arm homeschool high school students with the tools for preparing to get the most out of college, preparing for careers in the new economy, and preparing for the workplace to start fast and start strong. Because the brain is central to personal development and performance, we apply modern neuroscience.

Learn Better, Work Batter, Live Better
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