What the best executives are made of?

It’s nothing new that the market lacks professionals with high levels of qualifications and that discussions on the role of education in a country’s development abound.
Nobody will deny that one of a country’s sustainable growth pillars is quality education. However, how do we explain when very well educated professionals with extensive experience can’t be placed in new jobs?

How about recent M.A. and Ph.D. graduates who find it hard to get rehired? So what’s this story about lack of qualified professionals all about?

Maybe the big issue is that when the market says it can’t find skilled professionals it’s not about technical or academic qualifications (especially when we’re talking about managing or executive roles). Currently, there’s a lack of professionals in the market who possess competencies solely and exclusively learned from applying what they’ve learned in quality academic education.

To put it in simple terms, check out the movie clip below:

“Slumdog Millionaire” tells the story of a boy who grows up in an Indian slum and wins a television game show by giving the right answers to general knowledge questions based on his own life story. In sum, his entire life, his entire story provides him with the right answers.

Drawing a parallel here, this is how excellent executives get made. They’re those who learn from their daily experiences and consider everything as a learning opportunity. Of course we can’t ignore the relevance of academic education, but what corporations actually look for are the answers that practice has taught professionals.

When you look at it this way, your professional experiences (good and bad), when well used, may help you win “one million rubies” and make you successful.

Taking professional experiences and turning them into learning moments require a lot of resilience, emotional intelligence, empathy, patience, humility, and hard work. This type of competence is hardly learned in grad school.

And success—in my experience—might even be fortuitous, but luck usually finds those who are well prepared.

So, take a chance. The greater the risk, the higher the return. And know that everyone is afraid of making mistakes. After all, is there anyone out there who truly believes they’re ready for life?

GOOD LUCK!!

What kind of professional appeals to the market and headhunters after all?

Most professionals I talk to ask me if there is a formula to boost their careers.

Is it better to go for an M.B.A. or an M.A.? Is it better to go to grad school or invest the money in improving one’s English? Is it better to have Spanish as a second language or go for Chinese? Should I really go for another undergraduate degree and take advantage of some booming industry?

Know this: the success formula does exist but it’s unique for each individual. What does draw attention of headhunters and what the market values in professionals is their ability to deliver results for the organization.

And in the job selection processes people are looking for evidence that the professional can generate such results.

Based on that, the decision to whether study Spanish or Chinese, for instance, will depend on which language will help you produce more results. The same goes for an MBA. Getting the degree and then adding it to your resume will not improve your employability in and of itself. What will make you more valuable in the market is learning from the MBA how to improve your ability to deliver results. If that happens, then yes, your value in the market will go up.

That’s why the formula for success is unique. Some professionals seek improvement with graduate courses, others in expatriate experiences. Some learn better on their own, others with a mentor who can teach them every step of the way.

That’s why you should ideally decide on your professional future—even if it’s not perfectly outlined and defined—, find out what are the things you need to do in order to get there and draw a development plan in order to learn those things.

It sounds simple, but it’s not. I believe the biggest difficulty lies in knowing who you are. That’s why there isn’t such a thing as the career of the future or the professional success secret. If a professional is excellent with numbers and likes to work in the financial market early on, it’s no use migrating to a technical career in the oil and gas industry only because this is a hot market today and offers good future opportunities. They’ll probably not do well and will not take advantage of the market boom.
It’s simple. If it’s not “you’re thing” and you don’t like what you do, you won’t enjoy this success even if the market is hot.

Therefore, studying Chinese can be an excellent bet in a growing market, but if delivering results in your area has nothing to do with the use of this language studying it will be more of a cultural investment than a professional one.

You may even ask yourself if everything in the world revolves around results. This is what I’ll tell you, “YES.” But I don’t only mean professional ones.

Results may include sales increase, employee retention, fame, credibility, profitability, geographic presence, image, or even other results which don’t mean anything to some people, but to others are priceless. Which results do you want to achieve?

GOOD LUCK!!