When thinking about job choices, I often divide positions into two categories: those that make money for the firm, and those that help to run it.
Each role has strategic advantages and disadvantages for your career.
It’s good to think carefully about how each role is seen in each organization, and the availability of jobs for each function, and to make informed career choices after having done so.
Here’s a bit about each type of role.
Roles that make money for the organization:
Roles that make money for the organization involve sales/business development or performing the technical work that the firm sells.
In other words: if you work for a university, you make money by either being faculty and pulling in grants / having high class enrollments; or you make money by being in the development office and implementing successful fundraising campaigns.
If you make money for the firm, you will be valued, because the firm can put a dollar value on your contribution.
They can run reports showing how much time you billed to clients, or how many students are in your classes, or how many widgets you sold.
If you bring in money – substantially more than you’re paid – you won’t have to justify your value to the organization.
Roles that run the firm:
Roles that run the firm are those having to do with operations: human resources (HR), accounting, procurement, and IT, to name a few. These are jobs that are necessary, but might be less highly esteemed within the organization, because these roles are considered more fungible.
That’s the beauty and the hardship of these roles: operations roles are more plentiful, but sometimes seen as less strategic, because they are required to run every organization.
I once heard Michael Emery, Director, Division for Human Resources Management at IOM – UN Migration, talk about his desire to work for the United Nations, and how it drove him to earn a Masters degree in Human Resources.
“I realized,” Michael said in a talk to students at the Sanford School at Duke University “that if I wanted to work for the United Nations, I could approach it two ways. I could specialize in child welfare, and limit my options to UNICEF, or I could specialize in HR, and be able to work across many of the UN’s funds, agencies, and programs.”
And this is just what Mr. Emery has done, making a career in HR within various programs of the United Nations and rising in the ranks to an elite Director position.
If you want to be able to find a good job in any city, any town, anywhere, choose an operations role. Technical specialists often have to locate to specific locations (think faculty on the job market or film actors in Los Angeles) while good HR or accounting jobs are available in firms everywhere.
If you want to be highly valued and have increased job security, make a lot of money for your organization.
Every organization needs folks to help keep the lights on and the computers running, but these people are not necessarily as highly valued as they should be.
Often, people in these roles find themselves left out of strategic decisions within the organization, and these departments can even be outsourced in tight economic times.
If you choose to be a technical expert or to sell a firm’s products or services, your employment options might be limited to a particular geography or type of organization.
If you are good at what you do, though, you will be highly valued in your industry and will be able to seek top dollar for the work you do.
What has been your experience with this?
