Career Mobility Is More Than Talent
Ability has to survive a sequence of conversions before it becomes a viable move.
Career advice often collapses different problems into one instruction: improve your skills. Skill matters, but capability alone does not explain who advances.
A professional can be highly capable and remain invisible. Evidence can exist without being recognized. Recognition can exist without access to the people who control opportunity. An opening can appear without becoming a real choice because benefits, family responsibilities, immigration status, health, geography, debt, or risk make the move unsustainable.
The Career-Conversion Model separates those stages: Capability → Evidence → Recognition → Access → Opportunity → Choice → Movement. Each stage can fail for different reasons, which means each requires a different intervention.
This matters for individuals and institutions. Professionals need to diagnose where conversion stops. Employers need to examine whether their systems recognize evidence fairly, provide real access, and create mobility without forcing people to absorb hidden costs. Talent is a beginning. Mobility is a system.
This newsroom essay is original site commentary derived from the author’s supplied book arguments and frameworks. It is not a substitute for legal, medical, mental-health, financial, employment, or other regulated professional advice.