What the most successful people know that others don’t: Harvard career advisor

Hard work isn’t enough. As Gorick Ng learned firsthand in high school, college, and first jobs, building a successful career requires more than that. You need to know — and follow — a set of unspoken rules. 

“Have you ever looked around and wondered how some people just know that secret handshake to getting ahead in their careers?” says Ng, a career advisor at Harvard and bestselling author of “The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right.” 

Once upon a time, Ng coveted that mysterious knowledge. Now that he has it, he says, “I’m on a mission to demystify the unspoken rules for everybody.”

A first-generation student who attended Harvard College and Harvard Business School, Ng has since worked with thousands of early career professionals, and interviewed more than 500 people — recent grads, managers, and even CEOs — in different jobs, industries, and locations to learn from their experiences and wisdom. 

CNBC Make It chose “The Unspoken Rules” as our January book club pick because we know our readers are smart and ambitious professionals looking to build successful careers and happy lives. 

For anyone who’s been too busy to read or needs a quick recap, here are some key takeaways ahead of Wednesday’s discussion in our private LinkedIn group (you can join the group here, then drop your questions for Ng in the comments of this post).

Ng doesn’t make you wait until the end of his book to reveal the 20 rules. He lists them with brief explanations, starting literally on page 1. They include, in his words: 

• Think like an owner
• Mirror others
• Manage your intent and impact
• Work backward from the end goal
• Save others time and stress
• Show performance and potential

The rules “are not complete, however, without the secrets that will help you live by them,” Ng writes. That’s why this list is only the introduction.

Ng has found that it all comes down to demonstrating competence, commitment, and compatibility, what he calls the three Cs. 

Your interviewers, managers, and coworkers — whether you’re an intern or an executive — are always going to be assessing: “Can you do the job well? Are you excited to be here? Do you get along with us?” 

“The people who get jobs, get promoted, well, they know how to demonstrate the right dose of those three Cs,” Ng says. “The rest of us who stumble and don’t know why, well, these three Cs are unknown unknowns, things that we didn’t know we didn’t know.”

Ng weaves reminders throughout the book that the workplace is not, and never has been, a level playing field. It can be full of inequities and biases — racism, sexism, and any other “ism” you can think of. 

As he puts it: “Is this fair? No. Do we need a better system? Yes. Might we have a better system by the time you start your job? If only.”

His guidance, in the interim, takes these realities into account. “Until that better world arrives, knowing the three C’s can help you diagnose what’s happening around you and arm you with the tools to become the professional you have the potential to be.

Being a good student doesn’t automatically translate to being a good employee, let alone a successful professional who moves up in their career. 

Sure, some things you learned in school apply, like finishing your assignments on time and showing your work to get partial credit. But in many ways, you have to change your mindset. 

Here are just two of the examples Ng shares:

• “In school, [assignments] come with clear instructions and explicit grading rubrics. In the workplace, your instructions might be your manager rambling in a meeting or forwarding you a long email thread and asking, ‘Can you follow up?'”
• “School is a conveyor belt: If you keep passing your classes, you keep moving forward. Work is a wilderness expedition: Where you go and how quickly you get there is up to you — and the wilderness.” 

Swapping a student mindset for a professional mindset means learning to be proactive. “No one will care more about your success than you — and no one will know more about what you need than you,” Ng writes. “You can’t just sit around and wait for opportunities to come to you.”

Learn what your job entails. Introduce yourself. Clarify expectations. Ask questions. Suggest solutions. Volunteer for assignments. Communicate early and often. Think ahead. Prioritize. Own up to mistakes. Take care of yourself. Ask for feedback. Show appreciation. Stay in touch. Ask for what you want. 

You get the idea. “As the saying goes, we are each the hero of our own journey and everyone else is but a supporting character. People are too busy thinking about themselves to be thinking about you,” Ng says. “If you don’t look after your career, no one else will.”

At the same time, careers aren’t solitary endeavors. In order to succeed, you’ll need to navigate hierarchies, build relationships, manage your managers, resolve conflicts, and ultimately pay it forward. 

Ng returns once more to his wilderness expedition analogy to clarify something crucial: “Hiking up a mountain is a negotiation between humans and nature. Hiking up a career is a negotiation between humans and humans,” he writes. “Mountains may be hiked alone; careers cannot.”

Ready to dive in? Start reading, request to join our LinkedIn group, and come chat with us and Ng on Wednesday, January 28, at 10 a.m. ET, at our next CNBC Make It Book Club discussion. 

Any questions for the author? Drop them in the comments of this LinkedIn post (you’ll need to join our private group first, which you can do here). Or email them to us in advance at [email protected], using the subject line “Question for Gorick Ng.”

Hoping to get ahead? Our February pick is “New Happy: Getting Happiness Right in a World That’s Got It Wrong” by Stephanie Harrison.

Have suggestions for future picks? Send them to us at [email protected], using the subject line “Make It book club suggestion.”