Most Career Advice Only Covers 1 of the 3 Things That Actually Matter
The 3E Model (Education, Exposure, Experience) is the framework I use with every professional I coach. Most people over-index on one and wonder why they're stuck.
A few months ago I was coaching a senior engineer who'd been passed over for promotion twice. He had every certification you could name. AWS, Azure, CCNP, PMP... the works. Technically, he was the strongest person on his team.
Still stuck.
His manager's feedback was vague: "You need more visibility." He interpreted that as "get another cert." So he signed up for one more course.
That's when I introduced him to the framework I use with every professional I coach.
The 3E Model
Most career advice falls into one of three buckets, but rarely addresses all three:
Education: What you know. Courses, certifications, skills, domain knowledge. The stuff that shows up on your resume.
Exposure: Who knows you. Networking, visibility, personal brand, thought leadership. The stuff that gets you in the room.
Experience: What you've done. Projects, stretch assignments, new responsibilities. The stuff that proves you can deliver.
Here's the problem: most people massively over-index on one.
The Three Archetypes
The Perpetual Student. All Education, no Exposure. They have 12 certifications and a LinkedIn profile nobody's seen. They assume competence will be recognized automatically. It won't.
The Networker. All Exposure, no depth. They know everyone and everyone knows them, but when they get the opportunity, they can't deliver. Style without substance.
The Doer. All Experience, never promoted. They've shipped more projects than anyone on the team, but they've never told anyone about it. They resent the self-promoters who leapfrog them.
My engineer was a textbook Perpetual Student. World-class Education, almost zero Exposure. His manager literally didn't know about half the projects he'd delivered.
How the 3Es Work Together
Real career growth happens when all three work in concert:
Your skills (Education) open doors. Your visibility (Exposure) creates opportunities. Your track record (Experience) closes deals.
Miss one and the whole system breaks down. You can be the most skilled person in the building, but if nobody knows it, you won't get the stretch assignment. You can have incredible visibility, but if you can't execute, your reputation collapses fast.
The question isn't "which E should I focus on?" It's "which E am I neglecting?"
A Practical Exercise
Take 10 minutes this week and honestly assess where you are:
- Education: What have you learned in the last 90 days? Not consumed... actually applied.
- Exposure: Who outside your immediate team knows your name and what you're working on?
- Experience: What's one project in the last year where you operated above your current level?
The gap between where you're strong and where you're weak is usually where your career is stuck. My engineer started doing one internal presentation per month. Within six months, he got the promotion. Same skills. Different visibility.
That's the 3E Model. Simple to understand, hard to balance, and the foundation of what we're building at MomentumEQ... a system to help you see which E needs attention and what to do about it.