When you look at your bank statement you see how much financial capital or money you have. This is only one form of capital that you possess. There are four other human capitals that everyone possesses that are essential, but are commonly underdeveloped and underutilized. Understanding them and your ability to transfer one capital into another can help you achieve your career potential and live a meaningful life.
The Five Human Capitals:
- Knowledge/Skills Capital
- Creative Capital
- Financial Capital
- Service Capital
- Relationship Capital
Investing your life’s energy – your time, attention, contemplation, effort, and development of these five are critical for success in a 21st century marketplace.
Knowledge/Skills Capital
Knowledge capital refers to your knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs). In includes the work you’ve done in the past, your speed to learn, and your ability to assess and respond to the needs that an organization faces. We spend a significant amount of time building knowledge capital both explicit (e.g., Six Sigma Black Belt Certified) as well as implicit (e.g., How to manage a team to higher performance).
Knowledge capital is critical for you to qualify for the job. Recruiters search for key words and phrases that are direct connections between what the job needs and what skills candidates possess. As a job seeker, you must explicitly connect your KSAs with the words and phrases in the job posting both in your resume, cover letter, and interview – until you reach a point where the employer feels you are qualified. Then they will look for tipping-point factors that make you the right hire.
Creative Capital
Creative Capital isn’t the ability to be creative, although it may include creativity. Many people I know have incredible creative capital but are not creative. Creative capital is the power to create. It is both problem-solving and opportunity opening. Investing in creative capital can create an effective bridge for you to gain a new job, as well as help you demonstrate incredible performance in an existing job. People with strong creative capital can often reference accomplishments and outcomes. To create something requires understand concretely where things are now, and what the future state will be. It also includes the path to get to the goal.
Financial Capital
Your ability to translate the other four capitals into financial capital is what getting and holding a job is all about. You’re trading your life energy for money, as Vicki Robin explains well in “Your Money or Your Life.” We all know that money allows us affordances such as security, flexibility, comfort, and opportunities that do not arise without money. When you lose your job, one of the primary focuses is the preservation of financial capital.
When you get a new job, it’s important to use your financial capital to build your other capitals (joining clubs, attending conferences, charity, etc.). By putting your financial capital to work helping others helps build bonds that can help you manage any future job loss, as well as to help you live a more meaningful life.
Service Capital
For years I talked about the four types of capital and how one could be transferred to the other to help job seekers. Then I met Mack McCarter of Community Renewal International. He and I would spend long hours talking about what it really takes to rebuild failing communities, and he kept guiding me back to the understanding that the fabric of community is built upon what people do for each other. If someone is sick, they need help that may be beyond their immediate family. If someone needs their sidewalk shoveled, it’s an opportunity to build service capital. Service capital can also appear in volunteering, church, synagogue, temple, or other faith-based activities.
Often, service encounters help job seekers transcend typical human encounters (getting beyond, “What do you do?” cocktail party talk) and more into collaborative service dialogue (how can we help or serve others better?). Service capital can definitely be translated into landing a job and improving financial capital.
Relationship Capital
In workshops, I’ve often asked the question, “What’s the #1 way people get jobs?” Consistently audiences give the answer, “Through people they know.” I’m befuddled why we fail to teach how to effectively build, manage, and retain relationship management.
If relationship capital is the way most people get jobs, shouldn’t it make sense that it is the #1 thing we teach job seekers? Instead we spend too much time focusing on resume writing, interview skills, and job search.
Doug Hardy, who wrote the Monster Careers books, taught me that a fast way to build of relationship capital is to recognize that everyone needs something. The secret to effective networking is to recognize the need and see if there is a way to help the other person solve that need. As a job seeker, many feel that they have nothing to offer. But that is not correct. As a job seeker you have much to offer, and you have the context to do it in a way that is not biased by work or time constraints (for the time being.)
Doug reminded me often that the best time to network is not when you are looking for a job, but when you have a job. While this is true, it may feel like telling someone who’s fallen into a hole that they should “watch their step.” Too late. If you find yourself in this situation, then it’s often helpful to find opportunities to encounter others (job clubs, conferences, faith-based events, volunteering, etc.) and listen for people’s needs.
Listening is a great way to build relationship capital, and you don’t have to do anything. Just listen. Honing this skill can also help you when you interview and land your next job.
5 Relationship Capital Sub-types that influence career opportunities:
- Inner-company
- Inter-company
- Inner-discipline
- Inter-discipline
- Friends & Family
None of these relationship capital sub-types are inherently better or worse than any other. I’ve met employees and job seekers who are incredibly strong in only one of these areas and are extremely successful in achieving their career plans. I’ve met many as well who are over-invested in one resulting in great challenges in finding their next opportunity.
Inner-Company Relationship Capital
Plus: Deep internal relationships, Company Loyalty, team player, deep understanding of inner workings
Minus: Nose to the Grindstone syndrome, Low external relationship capital.
This represents the relationships a worker has with other individuals within their employing organization. It’s not uncommon for chronically unemployed job seekers to have invested significantly in inner-company relationship (company loyalty) over the other four capitals.
Inter-Company Relationship Capital
Plus: Market knowledge, ability to see opportunities outside your company
Minus: Low inner-company relationships
Job seekers with strong inter-company relationship capital are often much better positioned to land a job at another company – be it a partner of their former employer, a competitor, or an adjacent company. The risk that people with large inter-company connections is that they are domain experts in business development, sales, marketing, or human resources, and may not have the depth of connections needed to establish a great value proposition for new employers.
Inner-Discipline Relationship Capital
Plus: Peer connections, Deep understanding of issues in your domain, cross-pollinization of opportunities
Minus: Cross-discipline, transferable skills
Understanding what’s going on in your industry or domain of expertise can help you bridge effectively to another career in the same discipline. Attending trade shows, conferences, and other summit events and joining discipline organizations can help you network with professionals in your discipline, know what the hot topic issues are and create ways to bring value to your existing employer while keeping you aware of new opportunities.
In the early part of this century, there was a large downsizing in the U.S. automotive industry. Many autoworkers possessed deep inner-discipline relationship capital (they knew other auto industry professionals), but this didn’t help them get jobs. As much as Detroit scrambled to find ways to transfer the skills of these workers to new opportunities in manufacturing, the business infrastructure couldn’t absorb the volume of dislocated workers. This caused great stress and suffering for many.
Inter-Discipline Relationship Capital
Plus: Multidisciplinary knowledge and skills can help you adapt to any industry or occupation
Minus: The lack of a specific discipline can make it appear as you have no expertise in any essential area for an employer.
Have you ever spent time watching TED Talks? These inspiring videos help you learn the incredible work people are doing to change the world. They cross all kinds of industries and businesses. Understanding and having connections to people across disciplines can help you find job opportunities if you are able to effectively translate your knowledge, skills, and experience into others domains. For example, moving from a role as an IT support person to a locksmith. Both require problem-solving and technical skills. There’s the bridge. Building relationships across discipline can help that IT worker move into locksmithing more effectively.
Friends and Family
Plus: They really know you.
Minus: Their focus is not primarily work or business.
Investment in relationship capital for friends and family is essential for well-being. It creates work-life balance. I have met job seekers whose friends and family have been extraordinarily helpful in the job search process. You’d be surprised what connections people have. It’s important if you are looking for work to reach out and let your family know both that you are looking as well as what you are looking for.
It’s critical that you do the “ask,” and ask them if they know someone who might be helpful to you in getting to the career goal or job you’re seeking. Then, just listen, and have them help you make the connection.
Focusing on the five capitals can help you achieve your career potential and live a happier, more fulfilling life.
Understanding how to transfer capital from one form to another can help you successfully bridge situations when one of your capitals is decreased or at risk. I hope that this blog post is helpful to you in navigating your career and achieving your career potential.
Job Seeker Prayer
May all who seek a job find it.
May all who want a better job gain it.
May all beings achieve their potential.