The aim of The Careerologist blog is to shine light on the underlying reasons why so few people are on the right career path. I’ve been a career design consultant for over 15 years and I’ve met a lot of unhappy people who are stuck in jobs that don’t utilize their natural talents. And lately, the economic crisis we are facing has gotten me thinking about the relationship between mismatched professionals and the economic hole we’re in.

A major Gallup research study found that 70% of the American workforce is unmotivated and just not that into to their job. People are mentally “checked out,” essentially sleepwalking through the day. On the whole, six months after starting a new job, only 38% of all workers are still engaged. After 10 years on the job, this drops to 20%.

We can’t expect to keep our edge in the global economy with only two in ten who are “into” their work. Our careers are literally as inefficient as our cars. An internal combustion engine wastes 85% of its energy, no longer a sustainable or acceptable way of life. The same goes with our careers—80% of all workers wasting their talents will not support the level of sustainable growth required to be a world leader. Mismatched people have to work twice as hard to do average quality work and they don’t come up with the kind of breakthrough ideas we need to move our economy forward.

Let’s own up: we have a bunch of indifferent and uninspired people who are making our economy go round. Most of the people in this situation do not recognize that something’s wrong; slogging through the job is seen as “normal”. Our long-held social conventions and ideals promote working hard—not working smart. We’re proud to struggle and try to overcome our weaknesses—rather than doing what comes easily and naturally. We seek job security—rather than doing something that lights us up. Success is often equated directly to how miserable you are.

This hidden truth is going to reveal itself over the next decade as we try to jump-start our faltering economy. People will work harder and the engine may rev faster, but most of our human potential will be lost as heat caused by the friction of pounding square pegs into round holes. This problem is not related to salary, benefits or job security. Most people have their basic survival needs met; the bills are getting paid (despite the current high unemployment rate).

The answer isn’t a more efficient workplace, more training or better technology; we’ve picked all the low hanging fruit here over the last 30 years. The majority of the unhappy professionals are working with the latest high-tech tools, they’re highly trained to do their job, and they work in companies and organizations that are hip on process improvement and the latest management philosophies.

Better schools won’t solve it either. Most of my career changers went to the best private high schools and universities in the world. Ironically, our best educated are among the most miserable. A Harvard law degree is just a wall adornment if you’re really cut out for medicine. A superior education, at any level, is not giving people an edge when it comes to deciding what careers fit their abilities: it just gives them more room to choose the “wrong” career.

We have a Career Choice Delusion problem. Our rule of thumb for choosing a successful career is: if you get a good education and work hard, you can do anything you want . . . and you’ll be happy.  Young people who take this to heart do tend to get the best jobs, but they also get an unexpected surprise.  When young professionals turn 30-something, most are waking up to the painful realization that they’ve made a lousy career decision. Many times, they’re not just in the wrong job; they’re not even in the right ballpark or profession. This is moment of truth is hard to swallow; they’ve spent their wad on career that doesn’t fit. Here’s where the delusion is first recognized, usually 5 to 10 years after they’ve earned an expensive diploma.  When people feel “trapped” in the wrong profession, it’s not so easy to make a major change, and most won’t just up and quit or tell the boss they hate their job.  This is a big reason why people job hop or go back to school, and I’ve found that most dig themselves into a deeper hole.  There are plenty of people with graduate degrees in law, business and science that didn’t work out. 

The most common solution to the career mismatch problem is to stay put and fake it; the workplace is full of people pretending to be something they’re not.  Many people who are “not engaged” are buying time, trying to figure out what they’re “good at” without being too obvious.  The risk-takers will keep searching for what they want, but most people get comfortable and hope that no one notices their ruse.  Many clients tell me they’re worried about being “found out,” and often feel guilty or stressed out to the point of making themselves sick.  After 10 to 15 years in the wrong career people gradually lose enthusiasm and energy, it’s very difficult to stay on top of your game if you don’t care enough about the subject or field.   No matter how hard the company tries to motivate people to be more engaged, it’s in vain; it’s impossible for people to fake creativity and genuine interest.  It’s easy to fake commitment, 80% of us are playing this game—all it takes to win is to show up, look busy and get by.  Dilbert nails it here.

I’ve seen the unintended consequences of this opportune delusion up close in my practice. There’s the stressed out Harvard educated orthopedic surgeon who’s got the aptitude profile of a psychologist, the listless Stanford economist who’s really cut out to be a high school history teacher, and the miserable Georgetown lawyer whose is best suited to be a physical therapist. Few are willing upset their comfortable lifestyle and take the pay cut to express their true talents.

On the whole, most professionals are embarrassed or dumbfounded that they don’t know what their innate talents are, and at mid-career are somewhat humiliated to be asking “What I am meant to be when I grow up?” They are elated when they realize they actually have natural strengths, but many are angry with themselves for pursuing the wrong career for so long.

The roots of the career choice delusion are embedded in the infrastructure of our society and economy. How we parent, educate, direct our life course and do business is based on a fundamentally erroneous understanding of human nature—that we don’t have a nature. Rather, we think of ourselves as born unformed or “blank slates,” largely shaped by our environments and educations. Our national obsession with getting into the best schools is a testament to this belief. The latest findings in neuroscience and behavioral genetics have thoroughly debunked this old school as—well, just plain wrong. We are all innately good at certain things, and we each have certain innate weaknesses. This fact about our human nature isn’t part of our schools and colleges yet.  If it were, we’d put much less emphasis on the school’s influence on our chances to succeed.  Our long-held convention—that “more” education will lead to happy, highly productive people—has turned out to hurt us in the long run.

The inconvenient truth is that we are wasting our talents and money by misguiding, mis-educating and mis-employing our brightest people.  Now, more than ever before, our economy can’t afford to maintain this well-meaning, unintentional and expensive sham.  It’s simply unsustainable in this belt-tightening economic climate.

A big part of a long-term stimulus for our economy, and the world, is to vastly improve our career decisions. Each of us should be taught to understand what our “real” talents are and then we can confidently pursue the “right” education for us—one that brings long-term, sustainable fulfillment.  This is the first, big step toward having an inspired and innovative workforce. The easiest way to get millions of talented people is to get most of us doing what we are naturally gifted for. Once we get all the pegs in the right holes, collectively, we’ll create more of the kinds of companies and products we need to move our economy forward.

 Copyright © 2009 by Anthony A. Spadafore