Written by Corey Elliott, Portland State University Management and Leadership Student
*Disclaimer: This information does not apply to the people who value the detriment of others. This information does apply to those who aspire to be great people who are positive influences in the world that affects them. If this is you, read on.
I am currently an undergraduate
student at the School of Business Administration at Portland State University.
I go to school full time, work part time, and spend my weekends singing in a
choir. Needless to say that I am a busy person. As most of my college-going
peers, I have been obsessed with the skills and training and experience and
bells and whistles it takes to find my way into my “perfect” career; you know,
that perfect career that tasks you with the things you are passionate about,
and birds tweet you awake every day, and you have more money than you know what
to do with, and you can take all the time to do with what you will (that job
still exists, right?)
Contrary to the beliefs of our non-college
graduate parents, this whole phenomena of higher education is much less of a
luxury than just “going to school some more.” It’s a cutthroat semi-constant
battling with your classmates that usually results in your outcomes being
considered good enough for a passing grade, but not for getting that “good
job.” Conflicting ideology aside, higher education is also a place where one is
able to develop themselves as a functional adult and foster life-long
relationships and skills. That being said, I think that the whole college
experience is still as important as it was before the doors were widened to
include all groups other than the privileged.
If we get the skills (and the stress) that
are offered from a university, why is it that so many of us are left jobless
after graduating?
According to Georgetown University
in a 2013 study titled “Hard Times: College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings,”
7.9% of
college graduates nationally are not finding a job who are looking for one. For
those that are finding jobs, 36.7%
of them are finding positions that either do not require a degree or do not
match the degree that they achieved. That translates like this: a third of us who are
lucky to be hired virtually got their degree for nothing. How is this possible?
Since we were children we were trained to believe a college education is what
will get us whatever job we want, with immeasurable potential for wealth and
freedom in the world. What are we missing?
Where’s the dysfunction?
When speaking with my classmates in
various climates of our learning environment, the conversation usually entails
all the same facts: the details listed on their resume. Where they've attended
school, their major, their aspired title, their job history, the awards they
received in middle school… all the things that the average classmate did not
ask. Then, they assume you will tell them the same information so we can
compare accomplishments and trophies and experiences. But alas, that is the
competitive and flat environment we students are in. Unfortunately, there is much less probability that someone will come up to you looking to find out your
hobbies and interests on campus than someone coming to measure their strengths
against yours (or ask you to sign some petition) and create an epic team meant
to conquer the world.
All of these accomplishments and
experiences help to make us attractive candidates for jobs or business teams, albeit
less attractive as friends. With all these opportunities to build our resumes,
we still wait for the call to interview with our fancy stack of paper
describing how awesome we are. And here presents the disconnect: there are
those of us who grind through our degree program filling our time with all the
items that look good on our resume; then there are those who have taken
opportunities meant to build character seriously, thought about who they really
want to be as an adult, and behaved accordingly. I propose that to land that
dream job, one must embrace that higher education offers more than one type of skill; not only job-specific skills, but the silent skills of positive character traits.
It takes two: Skills + Personality
The skills and experiences we are
able to attain in our lives up to graduation are what takes us to the
interviews, but there must be something that separates us from the hundreds of
other individuals with similar or even better stacks of paper. Those "somethings" are the personality and
character traits that get us out of bed every day,
and tend to give guidance to our lives. There are many different values held by
any individual in the world as well as many words to describe them, but
according there are a few values that are commonly held in the world:
love, truthfulness, freedom, responsibility, and unity to name a few. These
common values are broad and have countless ways to be interpreted; the less
canonized traits like humility and bravery are included in these umbrella terms.
If we hold these values and traits close, we can guide our behavior towards the
things that truly make us happy. And, as it turns out, if we stay true to our
best selves, we are able to be the happiest and most successful in our careers
and our lives.
Personality is not usually a topic
easily related to the business world. Individuals most likely will address
personality when thinking about choosing who they desire to date. If there are
traits that humans are attracted to for copacetic romantic relationships, who’s
to say that there aren't important personality traits and values that employers
desire to hire the best employees?
This
survey is meant to provide insight to the importance of personal values when
choosing a partner. Created by Corey Elliott.
Traits that predict job performance
There are a lot of tools and
analyses out there whose responsibilities are to describe the performance
effectiveness of personality or behavior traits of an individual. The Big Five
test assesses traits related to the five dimensions of personality. These five
traits are openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and
neuroticism or emotional stability.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is
the most often used personality assessment by management, and measures types rather than traits
like the Big Five Test. As with most tests, the results yield inconclusive evidence for the connection of specific traits to performance. Tests for personality
traits are one of those that are difficult to conclude because there are many
amounts and combinations of traits in every person. Although there is no black
and white answer, the personality trait that most correlates to high job
performance across all types of jobs is conscientiousness, which includes the
traits of being organized, systematic, punctual, achievement oriented, and
dependable. Other traits and values that predict high job performance and satisfaction are good levels of self-esteem, self-efficacy, being proactive,
and having an internal locus of control.
Building and Maintaining Strong Character
Having strong character traits
typically means consistency and endurance; there is no real formula that exists
to define the perfect set of character traits within any given individual.
Every person has their own set of values, experiences, and personality. Sure,
when we take a survey or any other personality test, we find that everyone
surveyed fits into some category which makes it seem like there is no such
thing as being unique; the reality is that although we may fit into a category,
there is always some spillover or pull from another category.
Personality and
character are shaped early in life and tend to show stability over a lifetime.
These values are generally based in sociocultural frames, and are hard to
change as your life goes on. I believe that there are significant amounts of
people who are raised with a set of values that may disagree with their
personality, or vice versa. In an oppressive time, this would be reason to
isolate or punish someone. Fortunately in today’s flattening world, it
is becoming easier to connect to people all over the world who share values and find a supportive community to transition to. These topics of character
and personality then become manageable by the self.
There is no evidence that says that
you are able to change your core personality traits nor your values, but there
are methods to build character traits and focus your social skills to impact
them positively. Learning through service is a primary method of teaching
positive character traits with younger people, but how do we improve as adults?
I propose a few activities to do regularly to keep true to your values:
·
Take inventory of the things that mean most to
you and try to describe why they are important. When you are unable to further
discuss why a concept is important to you, you have discovered a core value.
Hold these close!
·
Try to learn what you are passionate about, and
make an effort to find ways to appreciate your passion. Participating in
activities that you truly enjoy will naturally harvest your best character
traits, and it is often that these activities will fit on your resume as well.
·
Keep your eyes on the prize! Once you know what
is important to you, do not lose sight of it. When it comes right down to it,
money can benefit happiness, but alone it will not make you happy. You must
take advantage of the lasting motivations in life: your morality first and
foremost.
·
Don’t be afraid to challenge yourself. We must
take all challenges as they are; a challenge is a call or summons to engage in
any contest or difficulty, usually competitive in nature, which results in
victory or failure. If you equip yourself with the tangible tools necessary to
accept the challenge along with the intangible traits that support success, not
only are you more likely to be victorious, but even in failure you are more
likely to gain respect and wisdom.
·
You should never stop being willing to grow. My
favorite hidden trait is humility; you have no way of knowing everything, so
you must remain teachable to continue improving who you were yesterday. There
are stagnant periods, however, if you feel that you have nowhere else to
improve, you are basically stepping into an execution line.
What Now?
The point of this is not to advise
you to abandon developing job skills needed to be effective and valuable in a
job. There are even more resources made available to the public about job skill
development than any other career service.
The Career Key-
Identify Your Skills
Don’t stop building your experience! Those line items on your resume
(volunteering, work experience, clubs, extracurriculars) are all sources of
important job skills. Look for new
opportunities that help you towards a long term goal like internships and
volunteering at events. But beware of the limitations of time; you must engage your
time in what is the most important for you, do not suffer the consequences of role
overload, conflict, or ambiguity.
Keep this in mind: while embarking
on new experiences or continuing activities, try to think about your moral self
whenever you can. Choose ethical behavior, support the people working close to
you, and put your best foot forward. Research states that we tend to rate
ourselves higher for ethics than others will rate us, which could mean that we can easily think there are little opportunities to improve. Our values and personality shape
how ethical we behave along with other factors; we have to realize that
others will perceive our actions differently than we may intend, and so we must
behave to the best of our abilities.
Remember that you obtained your job skills from hard work,
and your employer knows that. The decision of your hire becomes an
interaction between the things not seen on paper: the skills you don’t have or
need to improve, the needs of the job you are applying for, the standards and
obligations of the organization you are applying to, among other things. You
must learn how to sell your “brand you” and
your personal qualities, and help the interviewer sense the potential success that
may come from hiring you.
