How LinkedIn Inspires Employees to Own Their Career Journeys

Sometimes the best career advice is to ignore other peoples’ career advice and follow your own path — even if you have no idea where it leads. 

Before she was the global head of learning and talent development at LinkedIn, Linda Jingfang Cai was on track to become the youngest director at one of China’s top management firms. But, as she shared in a recent LinkedIn post, she felt a yearning for more. 

“I kept thinking, what if I don’t try anything different?” she says. “I would die . . . not knowing what else I’m capable of doing.”

So, she took the first bold steps in what she now calls her “squiggly career journey,” one full of twists, triumphs, setbacks, and hard-earned life lessons. It’s a journey that touched various industries in different countries and that eventually led her to Los Angeles, where last week she spoke at Talent Connect, the annual summit for talent leaders from around the globe organized by LinkedIn.

Her topic — how to inspire employees to own their career journeys — delivered insights to help organizations become places where employees embrace opportunities to learn, grow, and squiggle just like she did. Here are four key takeaways from Linda’s talk. 

1. In a time of uncertainty, flexibility reigns

Knowing that the work of talent professionals is different than it was six months ago and different than it will be tomorrow, Linda advises that an approach to career development can’t be one-size-fits-all. “We need to continue experimenting, innovating, and adapting,” she says. 

As we enter a period of economic uncertainty and deal with what appears to be a tight labor market for the foreseeable future, Linda stresses that there’s no going back to how we did our jobs before the pandemic.

As an example, she cites the continued popularity of remote job listings. According to the latest Global Talent Trends report, U.S. remote job postings on LinkedIn represented 14% of all posts in September but received 52% of all U.S. applications.

Prepandemic perks (like ping-pong tables and bottomless kombucha designed to make the office feel like a home away from home) are no longer enough. “Forward-thinking organizations,” Linda says, “need to create environments that embrace and unlock the potential of the whole employee, whether they are working from home or in the office.”

2. Career development benefits everyone

In her 20 years of leading large-scale organizational change, Linda has confronted one glaring and recurring problem: Companies consistently underestimate the power of upskilling and reskilling their employees. The result, she says, can be a workforce that is anxious, fearful, and resistant to change.

So how do you help people move from avoiding change to actively pursuing new goals? It starts with a definition of career transformation that recognizes the power of any step forward, be it mini or massive. 

The LinkedIn definition of career transformation includes:

• learning a new skill;
• taking on a new role;
• working with a cross-functional team; and
• growing personal networks.

These approaches can also be effective for employees who have already moved past fear and actually crave skill-building. The tide is definitely turning in this direction: During the pandemic, opportunities to learn and grow emerged as the top quality associated with positive work culture. 

And the newest cohort of workers, Gen Z, sees skill-building as a core job requirement rather than a perk. More than three-quarters (76%) of Gen Z employees believe that learning is the key to a successful career.

3. Know your employees, inside and out

You can’t inspire employees to unlock their career potential if you don’t know what they need to get there. 

The Institute for Corporate Productivity finds that more than half of organizations across the globe have insufficient data about the current skills and capabilities of their workforce and only  10% have an employee skills database or inventory with profiles for all employees.

That’s a major problem, Linda says, but one that can be solved by building stronger collaborations across HR, all focused around employee skills. 

Beyond basic skills assessment, leaders also need to do a better job of understanding what kinds of employees they’re working with. What motivates them? What obstacles do they face and what learning opportunities (mentorships, coaching, stretch projects) best suit their experience? 

It’s helpful to create employee personas. For example, “growth seekers,” could represent the cohort that’s hungriest for skills advancement and promotion. “Loyalists” represent the group that wants to try out different roles and projects so long as it’s tied to the company’s purpose and objectives.  

Only when you have the answers to these questions can you build an ecosystem where employees feel encouraged and supported to take the reins of their own career.

4. To help individuals transform, organizations also need to find new ways of operating

“Companies,” Linda says, “cannot afford making employee loyalty a one-way commitment by not investing in upskilling and reskilling the people they’ve already hired. At the end of the day, everyone wants to feel in control of their own destiny.”

So what shifts can organizations make to become places where employees seek continual learning? Linda cites several important steps:

• Stop overemphasizing promotion as the definition of career growth. Instead, adopt and celebrate a broad definition of career transformation. 
• Stop overlooking the important role of managers in guiding employee career development. Instead, give managers training to coach and enable people to achieve their goals. 
• Stop operating in silos where teams hoard talent and stifle internal mobility. Instead, cultivate a culture that encourages intentional talent movement. 
• Stop being inconsistent and haphazard in enabling career growth. Instead, develop equitable and thoughtful resources and processes that support individual needs. 

Final thoughts: Start having regular conversations about career development

Not sure where to start? Remember that every step is a step forward. 

Linda recently shared an anecdote from Deborah Wilson, head of talent development for Shutterstock, who says that simply bringing up “career development” more frequently in coaching conversations can help contribute to a rise in employee sentiment around L&D. 

Not everyone, Linda says, is looking to climb the career ladder to the top. For many, it’s the journey — testing new skills, discovering new interests and passions — that counts the most.

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