Career Dynamics

Chapter 7

Learning Objectives
1.
2.

3.
4. 5. 6.

Define career and distinguish among the various types of careers that exist. Describe the three major considerations in making career choices. Describe the process of organizational socialization, including the stages by which it occurs. Define mentoring and describe the processes through which mentorship develops. Identify and describe the special challenges likely to be confronted in established careers. Explain various personal challenges and strategies for managing your own career.
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Career Concepts
Career Dynamics: The wide variety of factors that influence the nature of peoples career choices, the directions their careers take, and their ultimate success and satisfaction over the course of their working lives. Career: The evolving sequences of work experience over time. Job: A predetermined set of activities a worker is expected to perform. Occupation: A coherent set of jobs.
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Career Concepts

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Characteristics of Modern Careers

Lifetime employment is a thing of the past. Careers are boundaryless. Career success is defined in many different ways. Where, when, and for whom you work are not necessarily fixed.
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Lifetime Employment
Reasons for the shift away from lifetime employment:
Technological advances are causing new jobs to come into existence and old ones to be phased out all the time. Economic shifts reduce job security due to mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, and firm closures. Social norms have changed such that company loyalty is no longer as highly valued as it once was.
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Boundaryless Careers
The

tendency for people to have careers that cut across various companies and industries. Reasons:
Downsizing eliminates employment options. Careers progress more quickly outside the organization. Changing careers is more socially acceptable than ever.
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Types of Careers
Steady-State

Linear
Spiral

Transitory

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Steady-State Career
The type of career characterized by a lifetime of employment in a single job.

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Linear Career
The type of career in which someone stays in a certain field and works his or her way up the occupational ladder from lowlevel jobs to highlevel jobs.
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Spiral Career
The type of career in which people evolve through a series of occupations, each of which requires new skills and builds on existing knowledge and skills.
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Transitory Career
The type of career in which someone moves between many different unrelated positions, spending about one to four years in each.

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Career Stages
1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

Preparation for Work: Acquiring various skills, learning about various career options, and determining what career you want to pursue. Organizational Entry: Finding out about specific jobs and getting your foot in the door. Early Career: Establishing yourself in a specific job and then achieving success at it. Middle Career: Figuring out how to continue to be productive after youve been working for over 20 years. Late Career: Keeping from becoming obsolete and planning for retirement.
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Career Stages

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Hollands Theory of Vocational Choice

A theory that claims that people will perform best at occupations that match their traits and personalities. Hollands Hexagon: A conceptualization specifying the occupations for which people are best suited based on which of six personality types most closely describes them.
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Hollands Theory

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Hollands Hexagon

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Career Anchors
A persons occupational self-concept that is based on his or her self-perceived talents, abilities, values, needs, and motives. Five major anchors:

Technical or Functional Managerial Competence Security and Stability Creativity or Entrepreneurship Autonomy and Independence
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Technical or Functional Anchor

Concentration on jobs focusing on specific content areas (e.g., auto mechanics, graphic arts).
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Managerial Competence Anchor

Focus on jobs that allow for analyzing business problems and dealing with people.
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Security and Stability Anchor

Attraction to jobs that are likely to continue into the future (e.g., the military).

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Creativity or Entrepreneurship Anchor

Primary interest in starting new companies from visions of unique products or services but not necessarily running them.
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Autonomy and Independence Anchor

Attraction to jobs that allow for freedom from constraints and to work at ones own pace (e.g., novelists and creative artists).
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Occupational Outlook

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Growth of High-Tech Jobs

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Organizational Socialization
The process through which people move from outsiders to effective, participating members of their organizations. Stages:
Anticipatory Socialization Encounter Metamorphosis

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Socialization Stages
Anticipatory Socialization: The first stage of socialization, concerned with learning about an organization before working there. Encounter: The second stage of organizational socialization, faced as newcomers to an organization learn their new duties and the organizations ways of operating. Metamorphosis: The third stage of organizational socialization, in which a person becomes a fullfledged member of the organization (e.g., after completing a training program for new recruits).
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Stages of Socialization

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Entry Shock
The disillusionment, disappointment, and confusion that result when new employees job expectations are unmet. Realistic Job Preview: The practice of giving prospective employees both positive and negative information about the jobs they are considering and the organizations they will enter.
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Realistic Job Previews

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Mentoring
The process by which a more experienced employee advises, counsels, and otherwise enhances the professional development of a new employee. Mentor: A more experienced employee who guides a newer employee in learning about the job and organization. Protg: An inexperienced employee who receives assistance from a more experienced employee in learning about a new job and/or organization.
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Mentoring Stages

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Benefits of Mentoring
For the protg: Mentors
Provide much needed emotional support and confidence Help pave the way for job success Suggest useful strategies for achieving work objectives Help bring the protg to the attention of top management Protect protgs from making errors and help them avoid risky situations
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Benefits of Mentoring
For the mentor:
May reap psychological benefits from feeling needed and a sense of accomplishment in helping the younger generation Can expect protgs to work hard at assigned tasks Can expect protgs to be loyal supporters May gain recognition from others for their work in helping nurture young talent Can feel proud of their protgs successes
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Risks of Mentoring

Protgs may find that their own success hinges on the success of their mentor. Any failures on the part of the protg may harm the mentors reputation. The mentors advice may not be as good as it should be. Protgs may become so highly dependent on their mentors that they will be slow to develop as self-reliant individuals. Mentors may grow overly reliant on their protgs, delegating too many responsibilities that they should be discharging themselves.
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Successful Mentoring

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Mentoring Diverse Groups

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Challenges in Established Careers

Confronting

the career plateau Making career changes Planning for succession and retirement
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Career Plateaus
Career Plateau: The point at which ones career has peaked and is unlikely to develop further. Career Development Intervention: Systematic efforts to help manage peoples careers while simultaneously helping the organizations in which they work. Outplacement Programs: Systematic efforts to find new jobs for employees who are laid off.

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Career Development Interventions

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Career Changes

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Retirement

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Personal Challenges and Strategies

Job Rotation Entrepreneurship Home-Based Business The Glass Ceiling Dealing with the Dual Career Hiring a Career Coach
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Job Rotation
The practice of transferring employees laterally between different jobs in an organization.

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Entrepreneurship

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Home-Based Businesses
The average American home-based worker earns only 70 percent as much as he or she would make outside the home. Many people decide to work at home so that they can have a better balance between work and family; however, one or the other often gets shortchanged. In most cases, there are limits to how large a home-based business can become.
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The Glass Ceiling

The artificial barrier that prevents qualified individuals from advancing in their organizations.

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Dealing with the Dual Career

Dual-Career Couples: Married couples in which both partners are employed. Dual-Career Conflict: A situation in which the career demands on one member of a couple are incompatible with the career demands on the other member of a couple. Career Break: The practice in which an employee leaves and then subsequently reenters a job following an agreed-upon period of absence. Dropping Out: The practice of resigning from a job for a long period of time and then taking another job at another time.
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