The Career Management Report

By: Amy Shepley

I have a client whose who doesn’t seem to have any relevant top careers on the Career Management Report. What should I do?

Unfortunately, I have learned from my own experience that putting a Career Management Report (CMR) in front of an individual who does not have many top matches is not only not helpful, it can be deflating for the client. The client will often translate few matches on the CMR to a poor match to all jobs. Of course, as Birkman Consultants, we know this is not true but the last thing we want to do is have the client walk away with having that impression.

Now, when I come across a profile similar to the one found above, here is how I approach it. First, I do not use the CMR at all, even if this is a client who has come to me for career guidance. If the client is not going to receive utility from a particular report, I’m not going to overwhelm them with more information, especially when that information isn’t going to be particularly helpful. More importantly, there is no need to discourage the client.

The two reports I emphasize instead are the Areas of Interest with Dictionary report and the Organizational Focus report. The Areas of Interest report provides encouraging data that can help the individual in determining a career that will excite and motivate them. It’s also typically very encouraging information:

“You’re Mechanical score is a 92. This means you have a higher Mechanical score than 92% of the population. That is significant and we need to spend some time exploring that aspect of you.”

I include the Organizational Focus report because the reality is, if this person has very few long bars on their CMR, they likely have short Organizational Focus bars. This is an important point for the client to understand and you wouldn’t want them to walk away without having an understanding of the unique aspects that go along with this particular profile.