Professional services firms - the value of career management strategies
Professional Career Management in Professional Services Firms is rather like motherhood and apple pie - everyone agrees that it is a "good thing". Most people believe they are practising it but very few people can tell you what is really happening. Commenting on styles and standards of parenthood is beyond the scope and courage of this writer, however we have all had experience of the variable quality of products described as "apple pie". Career management is distressingly similar -much talked about, assumed by management to be being delivered but meeting with a range of bafflement and confusion by its intended recipients.
In practice, there are three distinct ways in which career management takes place in firms and most firms practice at least one of these. Most common is the informal method, based on relationships and loosely modeled on the principal/articled clerk pattern which still has a semi mystical place in many lawyer 's memories. The modern equivalent of this is a firm wide mentoring scheme of assistance by partners, which has recently been introduced by many firms.
