Unearthing the Right Career Path: An Anthropological Approach to Job Hunting
Have you wondered how to find a job that aligns with your personal and professional values? Or question your acceptance of a role without vetting enough?
I have had many conversations lately where folks ask, “What do you want to do next?”
“I want to work for people that support my vision, in a place where I can make it happen. It’s more about ‘what problems do I want to solve, with whom?’ than anything else”.
This requires a more nuanced evaluation.
Navigating a career is more than choosing a job based on salary and benefits. It's about finding a place to thrive and make a meaningful impact. To understand the company culture, you must understand its customs, beliefs, social structures, and material culture. Even in today’s environment, it’s important to be thorough and show your investment in making a mutually beneficial decision.
And how do I do that? By putting on my anthropologist's hat. Much to my parent’s delight, my anthropology degree serves me daily in my career - value-based decisions on a career step being just one.
In anthropology, we strive to understand the value systems of different cultures. Similarly, understanding one's values and priorities is crucial in career navigation. With each potential job opportunity, I've used this anthropological approach to evaluate whether the position aligns with my personal and professional values.
For me, these values include Honesty, Growth, Partnership, Freedom, Fun, Respect, and Wholeness. By understanding the company's strengths and weaknesses, I can identify where my skills and abilities would be most valuable. By understanding the company's decision-making style, I can determine how to effectively influence decisions and drive change within the company.
The Cultural Artifact of Vision and Mission
Cultural artifacts are physical objects that give us insights into a particular society's customs, behaviors, and beliefs. In the corporate world, a company's vision and mission statements serve as such artifacts. They embody the company's purpose and provide a roadmap for its strategic journey.
I delve into these cultural artifacts during the initial phone screen with a recruiter. I pay attention to how the recruiter communicates the company's vision and mission. Are they able to articulate it clearly and passionately? This gives me a sense of whether the company's path aligns with my professional trajectory.
As I continue through a hiring process (or a networking call) with other folks in the company, I can build a well-rounded view of the communicated vision and mission, the true state of each, and the potential paths of evolution they may take, given other factors like market opportunity, team composition, and possible span of influence. All of these inform me about a potential operations strategy, which determines my path at an organization.
This is a nuanced conversation, but as a guide, here are some questions you can ask:
How would you describe the company’s vision and mission in your own words? Note the differences across responses.
Could you share a recent project or initiative that epitomizes the company's mission and vision?
How does the company measure or track its progress toward its mission and vision?
Can you describe a situation where the company had to adapt or evolve its mission or vision in response to market opportunities or challenges?
In your opinion, how well-aligned are the current projects, initiatives, or products with the company's stated vision and mission?
How do you foresee the company's mission and vision evolving in the next 3-5 years, considering the current market trends and opportunities?
Decoding the Cultural DNA: The Rosetta Stone of Values and Norms
Like every culture, every company has a unique set of values and norms that form its cultural DNA. These elements shape the company's identity, influencing everything from decision-making processes to interpersonal dynamics.
I decode this cultural DNA during the Zoom call with the hiring manager. I observe how the hiring manager describes the role and its responsibilities. Do they speak with enthusiasm and respect about their team and their work? Are they all sunshine and no shade? These observations offer a wealth of information about the company's culture and whether it's a place where I would thrive.
In particular, I care about aligning on core product values, leadership values, and general values with key influencers. Asking questions like:
Can you describe your philosophy on product development and management and where it may differ from norms?
How do you prioritize features or projects? What considerations factor into these decisions?
How do you handle disagreements or conflicts about product decisions within your team? With your leadership team?
How do you incorporate customer and end-user feedback in your product development process? What are your views on experimentation?
What methods do you use to influence your team to focus on making great decisions? communicating timelines?
How do you balance the need for innovation with the demands of maintaining and improving existing products?
Can you provide an example of a difficult leadership decision you made recently? What values guided your decision-making process?
How do you foster a culture of trust and transparency within your team?
How do you approach giving and receiving feedback?
Can you provide examples of how these values influence day-to-day decision-making and long-term strategic planning?
How are the company's values reflected in its performance appraisal and reward systems?
Could you share an instance where the company’s values guided a difficult decision or a challenging situation?
How does the company handle situations where employees' actions conflict with the stated values?
Power Structures and Decision-Making Styles: The Hieroglyphs of Influence
Anthropologists often study the power structures within societies to understand how decisions are made and who holds influence. Similarly, understanding the decision-making style within a company can offer valuable insights into its operational dynamics.
Understanding the power structures and decision-making styles can provide significant insight into the company's culture and operations. It's not just about knowing who holds power but also about how it is used and how decisions are made and implemented.
Power structures dictate who makes decisions, who has influence over those decisions, and how those decisions are disseminated throughout the company. Asking the right questions can provide a clear picture of these structures. For instance:
What is the decision-making hierarchy in the company?
How is information typically disseminated from leadership to employees?
Can you provide an example of a significant decision that was made recently? Who was involved in that decision?
How does the company handle disagreements or conflicts about decisions within the team or the organization?
How does the organization ensure diverse voices are represented in decision-making processes?
The decision-making style of a company can significantly impact its culture, employee satisfaction, and overall success. It's essential to determine whether decisions are made in a more centralized (top-down) or decentralized (bottom-up) manner and how much employee input is valued. Consider asking:
Are decisions in this company generally made in a top-down or bottom-up manner?
Can you provide an example of a recent decision that was faced with resistance and walk me through the process?
How are employees' ideas and feedback incorporated into decision-making?
Can you give an example of a situation where employee input directly influenced a major decision?
How is risk assessed in the decision-making process, and who is involved in this process?
Understanding these aspects of a company can provide you with a more in-depth look at its dynamics and help you assess whether it aligns with your professional goals and personal values. Power structures and decision-making styles can significantly impact your experience at a company, so it's important to evaluate them thoroughly before making a decision about your career trajectory.
Strengths and Weaknesses: The Cultural Landscape
Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of an organization is as crucial as understanding the intricacies of a society's cultural landscape. It aids in recognizing where you can contribute most significantly and where potential opportunities for growth and learning exist. To be clear, strengths and weaknesses are not a cornerstone of ethnographic research as judgment on culture is highly frowned upon - this is important in opportunity evaluation only.
During the interview process, it's essential to discern where the team exudes confidence. This could give you a glimpse of the company's strengths. Asking the right questions could offer valuable insights:
What do you believe are the company's/team’s/leadership team’s greatest strengths?
Can you provide an example of a project or initiative that leveraged these strengths?
How does the company capitalize on these strengths in its strategy and operations?
How are these strengths reflected in the team's day-to-day work?
How do you think these strengths give the company an advantage in the market?
Identifying weaknesses is about more than just understanding potential challenges and uncovering opportunities for personal growth and contribution. In an operations role, ask yourself, “Are these areas I want to help build the team up? Would that be fun/rewarding/impactful?” Observe areas where there might be hesitation or ambiguity and try to explore these further:
What do you think are the key areas where the company can improve or evolve?
Can you describe a situation where a weakness had to be addressed or turned into an opportunity?
How does the company approach areas of improvement or weakness?
What steps does the company take to mitigate these weaknesses?
How could someone in my potential role contribute to improving these areas?
With this evaluation, you can better understand where you might fit within it and how you can add value. It's about knowing how you can enhance the organization's strengths while also helping to address its weaknesses.
Tracing the Lines of Cultural Evolution: The Fossil Record of Change
Companies, like cultures, evolve. This evolution can provide valuable insights into the company's adaptability and resilience, key factors for long-term success.
During the Zoom call with a higher-level executive, I ask about the company's history and how it has evolved. Bonus points if you can also speak with an individual contributor with lots of history at the company - and reconcile the responses. How has the company adapted to changes in the market? Within the team? How has it overcome challenges?
Engaging in discussions about the company's history and journey can be enlightening to gain a deeper understanding of its evolution. You might want to ask:
Can you briefly overview the company's history and major milestones?
How has the company adapted to significant changes in the market or industry?
How has the team structure and culture evolved?
What major changes do you anticipate for the company in the next few years?
Can you describe when the company had to pivot its strategy or operations? What was it in response to? How was that process managed?
How does the company support and manage change within the team?
Could you provide an example of a major setback the company faced? How was it addressed, and what was the outcome?
How does the company plan for and manage risk and uncertainty?
In what ways does the company foster resilience among its employees?
By carefully tracing the lines of a company's cultural evolution and understanding its adaptability and resilience, you can better determine if its trajectory aligns with your career goals. It's not just about where the company is now but also about how it's changed over time and how it's prepared to adapt to future challenges and opportunities.
Influence on Products/Services: The Material Culture
In anthropology, material culture refers to the physical objects, resources, and spaces people use to define their culture. In a corporate context, a company's products or services can be seen as its material culture, reflecting its values, beliefs, and capabilities.
During my interactions with potential employers, I observe how the team's beliefs and values influence their products or services. How do these offerings reflect the company's culture? These observations may provide insights into the company's market positioning and strategic direction, helping me determine whether your beliefs and values align with those embedded in the company's offerings - if this is important to you.
To comprehend how a team's beliefs and values influence their products or services, ask the following:
How do the company's products or services embody its values and culture?
Can you give specific examples of how company values have influenced the development of a product or service?
How does the company balance the drive for profit with the commitment to its values in creating and delivering its products/services?
How do the company's products or services differentiate it from competitors?
What strategic goals guide the company's product/service development?
By exploring these facets of a company's "material culture," you can evaluate whether your own beliefs and values align with those reflected in the company's products or services. This will also help you assess how well the company adapts to market changes and upholds its values in its tangible offerings.
In essence, career navigation involves studying potential employers - understanding their customs (company culture), beliefs (values and mission), social structures (organizational structure and decision-making style), and material culture (products or services).
This approach goes beyond evaluating the surface-level aspects of a job offer, such as salary and benefits. It delves deeper into the qualitative aspects of the company, helping me determine whether I would feel fulfilled and thrive in the company's environment.
Thanks for suffering through all my corny section titles. I am interested in your thoughts and if you try any of this approach, what did and didn’t work for you?