Career decisions in the real world

Over the years scholars have produced a lot of ideas to help our clients make better career decisions. Their decision-making models are based on erudite decision analysis theory, and are highly cited and well-regarded. 

But they don't work. 

Careers advisers don't use them, and students don't like them, and so young people are often left on their own to work out the actual nuts and bolts of making a choice.

And yet they manage. Every year in the UK, around 600,000 graduates leave university and almost all of them find their way to some kind of next step. Clearly, they work out their own process, and develop their own career decision-making models. So how do they manage it? And is there anything we can learn from them?

Last summer I spoke to 40 recent graduates all from the UK, all currently working. I asked them to think back to before they had any career ideas and to talk me through how they went from 'I have no idea what I want to do' to 'I have a job'. There were some common threads running through their stories, and on the back of them I developed this model - a model of real-world career decision-making. 

The stages in this model are, to some degree, familiar. The idea of having an idea, exploring it in depth and making a choice are well-worn. But there are some key differences between the stages in this model and more traditional advice. 

1). Students pick career ideas one at a time. They don't (as traditional models advise) identify a shortlist and then explore them all to identify the best one. Instead they pick one job idea, explore that and decide whether it's a yes or a no. If it's a no, they go back and pick another. 

Career choices are incredibly complex and one thing that causes decision-making paralysis is cognitive overload - too much to think about at once. Taking one job idea at a time seems like an eminently sensible idea to keep the process manageable. 

2). Self-awareness happens in the context of a particular job idea and not in isolation: students use a job idea to help develop self-awareness, rather than using self-awareness to generate a job idea. The students did not start the process by thinking about themselves, their strengths, values and requirements. Instead they started with a job idea and then reflected on themselves in terms of that one idea. They might, for example, pick the idea of nursing, then ask themselves 'What would I like about nursing? What would I not like? What would I be good at? What would I struggle with?'. 

Again, this makes perfect sense. We all know that becoming self-aware is a lifetime endeavour, and for these young people with their limited life and work experience, answering abstract questions about their strengths and values is near impossible. Placing these same questions within a tangible context - one that they can imagine or envisage makes it far easier. 

3) Students explore occupational ideas by applying for a job. Traditional models suggest that decision makers should explore, make a choice and then apply; but these graduates often explored their job idea through applying, and then made a choice. 

This makes some sense, although has its down sides. The interview process is a great way to get to talk to people working in the field, and can really help students to imagine themselves in that position. But the danger is that students use the application process as a way to avoid having to make a choice - they leave the 'choice' in the hands of the employer, seeing a job offer as a sign that the job is right for them, or perhaps feeling that they had invested so much in the application process, that they couldn't bear all their efforts to be in vain. 

This feels like an approach that could arguably be usefully encouraged, as long as the students are supported to resist the temptation just to accept their first offer. 

4) Students' decisions are mostly made through chance and instinct. They generated ideas on the back of TV programmes, they explored in-depth by talking to people they came across, and they made choices on the basis of one inspirational conversation. But where chance didn't yield a useful outcome, they became rational planners, using pros and cons lists to make choices, and attending careers events to generate ideas. 

The decision-making literature has warmed in recent years to the idea of a 'dual-processing model' in which people combine instinct and chance with some rational planning. Using instinct and chance feels like a very sensible way for students to start the process - after all there are more that 25,000 occupations in the UK, and they need some way to narrow it down. But what was noticeable in this model was that students preferred to leave it to chance - they only resorted to rational planning and research when chance and instinct failed them. Perhaps students could benefit from being encouraged to think critically about their chance encounters and instinctive decisions to make sure they don't sleepwalk into a poor choice. 

5) Graduates are always keeping their options open. They may have made a choice, and settled on a job, but for may of them, it didn't feel like a conclusion. This was what they were going to do whilst they carried on looking. 

This feels like a very reassuring message to give students. Career anxiety is widespread in young people, and one of their main fears is that they will make the wrong choice. This study shows that there is no wrong choice. Even if they end up doing something terrible, somewhere they hate, it doesn't matter. They will learn something, earn some money and be in a position to make a better choice next time round. 

I think the model the students have come up with is probably better than the traditional decision-making models. It certainly seems easier to relate to. I can see that it could be hugely reassuring to students to understand this process - perhaps learning about it in their first years. They might find it both comforting and practically useful.

I have written this up as an academic research paper which is under-going peer review at the moment. I'll post the link to the paper once it is accepted. But in the meantime, do get in touch if you want any further details!

Developing Career Identity with young people: Marcia's Identity Status Theory

I've found a new theory! Well, it isn't new as such, just new to me. 

Marcia's Identity Status Theory is about identity development in adolescents, and  Kolbert, Hilt, Crothers and Nice have written a really useful paper which links the theory very neatly with career development and offers some suggestions for career practice - I've linked to the paper in the reference list below if you want to delve deeper. The theory draws together some of the things that I've been wrangling with lately, in particular the links between career decision making and anxiety. 

Marcia's Identity Status Theory (2002) draws on and develops the ideas of Erikson who did a lot of interesting work on identity development in the 1970s, but Marcia articulates the process of developing identity, I think, in a more usable way. Marcia's theory talks about identity confusion as an inevitable part of adolescent identity development, and acknowledges that identities aren't usually formed till someone is at least 20. This proves a clear challenge for our young people in the UK, who often have to make career choices by the time they are 17.

The theory considers two dimensions of identity development: identity commitment, which is akin to career decidedness - the degree to which someone has made a choice and feels confident that this is what they want; and exploration, which is the process of self-questioning, as an individual considers their own values, attributes and world-view, and tries out different identities before crystallising their own goals. I would also argue that this process of exploration, for career development, also needs to include exploration of the world of work - career options and the labour market too. 

These two dimensions then give us four identity status positions:

Identity Diffusion is low commitment and low exploration. Students whose identity development is in this quadrant don't know what they want to do, and can't confidently name a path they want to pursue after their current course. But although they have no real plans, they aren't doing anything to help explore options. These students are often in a state of career anxiety - knowing that they need to make a choice, but anxious about how to do it, and they often end up being avoidant - refusing to engage with any useful activities because they know that engaging with career exploration will highlight their confusion and exacerbate their emotional disequilibrium. 

Identity Foreclosure: this is a state of high commitment but low exploration. These students feel committed to one particular job or pathway, but when you ask them to explain what it is and why they are drawn to it, they can't really articulate their own position. The jobs they choose are often high status (doctor, lawyer, engineer) and the student is often highly influenced by their families, friends or school. These can be tricky students to work with because they may not realise that there is more work to be done before they are in a position to make a good choice. 

Identity Moratorium:  in this state, students are exploring but have not yet committed to one particular path. Despite its rather grim sounding name, this is really where young people should be, as it is only by passing through this state that they can reach the identity achievement they need. But we also know that the very process of exploring oneself and one's career options leads to anxiety, and anxiety can lead to avoidance - thus pushing students back into the diffusion or foreclosure states (Crocetii et al., 2016; Pisarik et al., 2017).

Identity Achievement: This is where we are hoping that students will end up: high on commitment and high on exploration, and with a clear sense of their own career identity and where they want to end up, and a plan that aligns with their own values, interests and strengths. 

There seems to be some solid empirical evidence backing up this theory, with Kroger et al (2010) offering support for this path of identity development in adolescents, and other scholars showing that a crystallised identity brings all sorts of psychological rewards including resilience, emotional stability and self-esteem, as well as life satisfaction, academic achievement and positive well-being (Karas et al., 2015; Morsunbel et al., 2014; Pop et al., 2016; Sugimura et al., 2015).

Using this in practice

This framework can be used to help you understand your students current identity state. This can help you to manage career conversations or offer exercises that are likely to be pitched correctly and are therefore more likely to be effective. For example:

Identity Diffusion: Possible selves is a great exercise to try at this stage as it allows students to work with their identities and helps them to set goals. 

Identity Foreclosure: Students in this quadrant need to be encouraged to think very critically about their choices, so asking them more about why they think their dad wants them to be an engineer, or inviting them to question what they might not like about the work of a doctor is useful.

Identity Moratorium: The kind of exploration that students are engaging with at this stage inevitably involves some degree uncertainty which often (perhaps usually) leads to some anxiety, so alongside techniques to help students analyse themselves and the options available, some focus on normalising this anxiety and offering students some techniques to help is useful.

Identity Achievement: the support you can offer here is really about the application process, identifying suitable opportunities, help with CVs, application forms and interview skills.

As well as being a framework to help you to plan your own input, I think the framework could be really useful to share explicitly with students. Sharing this explicitly might help to normalise the anxiety associated with career choices, could encourage students to watch out for avoidant behaviour and could offer a pathway out, as students see that further exploration, although it might be painful, is a way through. 

I am drawn to this model because it is holistic, embracing the idea of identity, and acknowledging, explicitly, the emotional states that are so often associated with career development and which so often stand in the way of students' progressing. 

References

Crocetti, E., Beyers, W., & Cok, F. (2016). Shedding light on the dark side of identity: Introduction the special issue. Journal of Adolescence, 47, 104-108. https://doi.10/1016/j.adolescence.2016.01.002

Erikson, E. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. Norton. 

Kaplan, A., & Flum, H. (2012). Identity formation in educational settings: A critical focus for education in the 21st century. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 37(3), 171-175. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2012.01.005

Kroger, J., Martinussen, M., & Marcia, J. (2010). Identity status change during adolescence and young adulthood: A meta-analysis. Journal of Adolescence, 33(5), 683–698. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2009.11.002  

Kolbert, J., Hilt, D., Crothers, L. & Nice,M.  (2021) School Counselors’ Use of Marcia’s Identity Status Theory for Career Advisement and Consultation and Collaboration. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthew-Nice-2/publication/357062271_School_Counselors'_Use_of_Marcia's_Identity_Status_Theory_for_Career_Advisement_and_Consultation_and_Collaboration/links/61ccad3ce669ee0f5c7189a3/School-Counselors-Use-of-Marcias-Identity-Status-Theory-for-Career-Advisement-and-Consultation-and-Collaboration.pdf

Marcia, J. E. (1966). Development and validation of ego-identity status. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3(5), 551-558. https://doi.10.1037/h0023281 Marcia, J. E. (2002). Adolescence, identity, and the Bernardone family. Family, Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research, 2(3), 199-209. https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532706XID0203_01

Morsunbul, U., Crocetti, E., Cok, F., & Meeus, W. (2014). Brief report: The UtrechtManagement of Identity Commitments Scale (U-MICS): Gender and age measurement invariance and convergent validity of the Turkish version. Journal of Adolescence, 37(6), 799-805

Pisarik, C. T., Rowell, P. C., & Thompson, L. K. (2017). A phenomenological study of career anxiety among college students. The Career Development Quarterly, 65(4), 339-352. https://doi.org/10.1002/cdq.12112 

Pop, E., Negru-Subtirica, O., Crocetti, E., Opre, A., & Meeus, W. (2016). On the interplay between academic achievement and educational identity: A longitudinal study. Journal of Adolescence, 47, 135-144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2015.11.004

Sugimura, K., Niwa, T., Takahashi, A., Sugiura, Y., Jinno, M., & Crocetti, E. (2015). Cultural self-construction and identity formation in emerging adulthood: A study on Japanese university students and workers. Journal of Youth Studies, 18(10), 1326-1346. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2015.1039964 

Social support and career outcomes

 I have been noticing as I trawl through the literature, how often social support comes up as a predictor of positive career or work related outcomes and I thought I’d just highlight some of the key ways in which social support can impact positively on work and career.

It seems that social support can have a positive impact on people’s career choices, their ability to get the jobs they want, their subsequent satisfaction at work and their psychological resources that help with everything:

Career choices:

·       Social approval is an important determiner of occupational preferences

·       Other people have an impact on career decisions (relational career – Blustein / Schultheiss)

·       Social support correlates with career decidedness (Jemini-Gashi, Duraku & Kelmendi, 2019)

·       Social support predicts engagement with career planning (Hirshi et al., 2011)

·       Social support predicts career exploration (Turan et al., 2014)

 

Getting jobs:

·       Social support helps people to get jobs

·       There is a moderately strong positive relationships between social support and self-esteem, general self-efficacy, and job search self-efficacy (Maddy et al., 2015)

·       It predicts job-search intention and motivation (Van Yperen & Hagedoorn, 2003)

·       It positively relates to job-search intensity and employment status (Van Hooft et al., 2021)

At work:

·       The people we are surrounded by have a huge impact on job satisfaction -co-workers, managers, having a ‘best friend’ at work (Rath & Harter, 201)

·       Connections have an impact on episodic happiness at work (Yates, forthcoming)

·       More social support leads to more satisfaction with career choices (Murtagh et al., 2011)

·       Social support helps lead to a positive outcome of a career shock

·       Friend and co-worker support enhances self-efficacy and through that, has an impact on resilience at work (Wang et al., 2018)

·       Social support makes dissatisfied employees more likely to engage in job crafting

·       Social support enhances work self-efficacy (Korte, 2017)

·       Coping strategies (Ito & Brotheridge, 2003)

Psychological resources:

·       Social support has a positive impact on career optimism (Eva et al., 2020)

·       Positive relationships between social support and self-esteem, general self-efficacy (Maddy et al., 2015)

·       Social support enhances career adaptability (Wang et al., 2015)

This feels like quite a list, to me, and I am quite sure that a bit more effort would have got me much further. We are social animals, aren’t we? And if we’ve evolved to seek out friends and to make connections this is bound to have a wide range of positive benefits for us. Still, I find it’s quite interesting to consider what an influence other people have on so many aspects of our careers.

I wonder what this means for us as career practitioners? What do we do at the moment to foster these kinds of connections? Career work generally takes place in both one-to-one and group contexts, but to what extent do we actually do much in these group settings to try and foster a culture of group support? And are there any other strategies we could adopt to help our job seekers to learn how to develop their own social networks?

I’ll carry on adding to this list as I find new papers – it would be interesting to see how wide the impact of social support is, in career terms.

Career Shocks

There seems to be quite a lot of interest about the whole idea of career shocks in the literature at the moment, so I thought I would try and unpick it to provide a summary. 

What is a career shock?

A career shock happens when an unexpected external event makes you start to question your own career. A career shock can be defined as ‘a disruptive and extraordinary event that is, at least to some degree, caused by factors outside the focal individual’s control and that triggers a deliberate thought process concerning one’s career’ (Akkermans, Seibert, & Mol 2018, p.4). From a career-theory perspective, a career shock is a good example of the interplay between agency and structure – the shock is external (that’s the ‘structure’ bit) but the response is internal (which is where ‘agency’ comes in).

What kinds of shocks are there?

Career shocks can come from all angles. They can personal or interpersonal, within the organisation or outside it. Examples include of the death of a parent, getting a promotion, not getting a promotion, relocating because of a spouse’s job, having children, illness, an economic crash, a pandemic, being made redundant, an earthquake, or unexpected exam results. Career shocks can be negative, such as losing one’s job or a close relative passing away, or positive, such as receiving an unexpected promotion or receiving an award.

What is the impact of a career shock?

Career shocks can lead to both positive and negative changes. Most research suggest that shock valence (ie the emotions you feel about the shock itself) is related to career outcomes (Akkermans et al., 2018), so positive career shocks lead to positive career outcomes and negative shocks to negative outcomes. Kraimer et al. (2019) found that positive career shocks (e.g., receiving a research reward), were related to higher levels of career satisfaction and work engagement among academics, and Blokker et al. (2019) showed that negative shocks undermine the relationship between career competencies and perceptions of external employability in young professionals. Negative career shocks have also been shown to have a detrimental impact on career optimism and job security (Hofer, Spurk & Hirshi, 2020). But this is not always the case and some studies show that negative shocks can lead to positive career outcomes, in particular for those who weren’t all that happy in their jobs in the first place, but who needed an external push to motivate them to take action. For example, Rummel et al. (2019) demonstrated that negative shocks (e.g., being passed over for an anticipated promotion), can lead to longer term positive outcomes such as starting a successful business. And even positive shocks do not invariably lead to positive outcomes – Korotov (2020) showed that positive shocks can cause ambivalent reactions.

Why does a career shock have an impact?

The career shock can have an impact on the choices an individual makes (eg Nair & Chatterjee, 2020, Rummel et al., 2019), their psychological resources including their levels of optimism (Hofer et al., 2020) or sense of agency or their levels of person-job fit through an impact on either demands or resources (Pak et al., 2020). The jarring impact of the shock can also trigger some in-depth reflection about their career path.

Not all shocks are created equal: the bigger the shock, the more destabilising properties it has.

An individual’s pre-existing feelings about work seems to influence the kind of reaction that they had to the shock: People who were satisfied at work pre-shock are more likely to be prompted to do some rational, conscious critical reflection about their careers and their next steps. Those who were dissatisfied pre-shock were more likely to fling themselves spontaneously into action after the shock. For people who felt neutral about their jobs, a career shock can make them realise that they weren’t happy – as the literature says, the shock can surface latent disquiet.

Career shocks and Covid-19

COVID-19 has of course caused a range of different kinds of career shock – both positive and negative. Some people are working harder than ever, some people have lost their jobs, some people can only work from home, and some people have to reinvent how they work (Kniffin et al., 2020). For many the pandemic has given them the space to reflect on their careers, and perhaps to re-evaluate their priorities and values.

How to help following a career shock:

The literature seems to offer a number of suggestions for working with career shocks. First there are some suggestions for things that people can do to shock-proof their careers – traits or skills they can develop which will help them to cope if they do face a shock:

• ·       Good existing levels of psychological resources (social capital, human capital, identity and resilience) can help people to cope better when facing unexpected events.

·       High levels of career adaptability make it more likely that people experiencing career shocks (even negative ones) will end up thriving in their careers (Mansur & Felix, 2020)

• ·       A protean career orientation – one that is self-directed and values driven has been shown to help people to cope when external events surprise them.  

 Then there are suggestions for coaches working with career-shocked clients:

• ·       A career shock often ends up being about a person’s values, and writing sessions can be a great way to help people to identify and articulate what matters to them.
• ·       Time to think. The evidence is clear that taking a bit of time out to reflect on what has happened, on your career journey so far and on your hopes for the future can
• ·       Social support - both a significant other, and a social circle both help with the process of critical reflection (Wordsworth et al., 2021)
• ·       Identity work is what is needed to help people to capitalise on the disruption of the career shock. A clearly articulated continuous identity is particularly important as a way to maintain a sense of a coherent self whilst coping with a transition – a strong sense of identity can help people to see a continuous thread between what they used to do and what they are having to do now.
• ·       Developing career competencies can enable individuals to better capitalize on positive career shocks (Blokker et al., 2019).

And finally, ideas for organisations, to help ensure that their career-shocked employees stay productive and engaged:

• ·       Mentoring can help people to focus on possible future selves
• ·       Organisations who allow or encourage job crafting can help people adjust their work to be more aligned with their identities
• ·       Organisation or supervisor can help them to a better P-O fit (Pak et al., 2020)
• ·       Job embeddedness can buffer the effect of negative shocks on turnover, so keeping your teams close-knit can help (Burton et al., 2010)

 

Further Reading

Akkermans, J., S. E. Seibert, and S. T. Mol. 2018. “Tales of the Unexpected: Integrating Career Shocks in the Contemporary Careers Literature.” SA Journal of Industrial Psychology 44 (1): 1–10. doi:10.4102/sajip.v44i0.1503

Akkermans, J., Seibert, S. E., & Mol, S. T. (2018). Tales of the unexpected: Integrating career shocks in the contemporary careers literature. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 44(1), 1-10.

Akkermans, J., Richardson, J., & Kraimer, M. (2020). The Covid-19 crisis as a career shock: Implications for careers and vocational behavior. Journal of Vocational Behavior https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001879120300592

Ghosh, R. (2021). Protean career orientation and career shock due to the pandemic: HRD’s role in supporting intersectional identity work. Human Resource Development International, 1-3.

Hite, L. M., & McDonald, K. S. (2020). Careers after COVID-19: challenges and changes. Human Resource Development International, 23(4), 427-437.

Hofer, A., Spurk, D., & Hirschi, A. (2020). When and why do negative organization-related career shocks impair career optimism? A conditional indirect effect model. Career development international.

Korotov, K. (2021). Executives and career shocks: observations from coaching practice. Career Development International.

Mansur, J., & Felix, B. (2020). On lemons and lemonade: the effect of positive and negative career shocks on thriving. Career Development International.

McKenna, S. (2021). Career shock: the profound effect of COVID-19 on four Australian middle managers. LSE Business Review.

Pak, K., Kooij, D., De Lange, A. H., Meyers, M. C., & van Veldhoven, M. (2020). Unravelling the process between career shock and career (un) sustainability: exploring the role of perceived human resource management. Career Development International.

Rummel, S., Akkermans, J., Blokker, R., & Van Gelderen, M. (2019). Shocks and entrepreneurship: a study of career shocks among newly graduated entrepreneurs. Career Development International.

Wild, B. (2021). Covid-19 as a career shock and its influence on career development for nurses in the Netherlands.

Wordsworth, R., & Nilakant, V. (2021). Unexpected change: Career transitions following a significant extra-organizational shock. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 127, 103555.

Career Theories in Action: What and How

I'm involved in a couple of projects looking at the use of career theories in practice. I've been talking to a lot of career practitioners about their use of theories in practice, and can't help but feel that we're missing a trick. 

The careers advisers I've been talking to do, all, draw on theories, but not that many theories, and not all that often. I feel that something has gone wrong with the system: either we're not coming up with the right theories; or they are not written usefully, or published accessibly; or careers advisers don't value them; or don't know how to use them. 

I've been thinking about why this would be, and I wanted to spend a bit of time unpicking my own assumption that theories are useful. I love a theory, but are they actually useful? Are career conversations better when they include some theories?

Career Theories in Action: What

I think there are two broad types of theories I use in my practice (NB I'm using the word 'theory' very broadly here, to include approaches, models and frameworks).

Theories which inform the process of career coaching. 
There is one approach I use ALL the time, and one I use fairly often. The one I use all the time is Roger's theory of person-centred counselling (AKA humanism, client- or person-centred counselling). I use this as an underpinning philosophy, and it informs my whole understanding of the process: who has the answers (the client), how I should talk to them (open questions, lots of reflective listening) and how I should strive to understand them (unconditional positive regard). This one informs every single career conversation I ever have. 
Next up is the GROW model (or T-GROW, or RE-GROW, or GROWTH), which is my go-to structure for most of my conversations. Specifically, I am entirely sold on the need to set goals for a session, and the value of identifying specific actions for my client to take away. 
Then I think there are half a dozen other approaches that I use quite often. My favourite ones at the moment are strengths, possible selves, ACT, solution focused coaching, art therapy tools, narrative coaching, career style interview, motivational interviewing, MBTI and transactional analysis. 

I draw on two or more of these in every career conversation I have, and I definitely think that these theories make me a better practitioner and add value to my clients. In fact, I might even go so far as to say it is these theories that make me a practitioner - without them, I'm just having a chat.

Theories that help me understand careers  the content of my career conversations 
There are more of these kinds of theories, and I think I can put them in four groups (a slightly artificial division - but this is how I see them):
1) Theories that tell us about people's motivations - what drives them and what makes them happy.
2) Theories that help us to understand career transitions - how and why people change direction, and how they cope
3) Theories about making decisions, and what kinds of factors influence people's choices
4) Theories about how people make decisions - how they learn about jobs and the process of career decision making.

I've identified my go-to theories here, those that most often actually help me to understand my clients' career journeys. I am interested by the fact that less than half of them are career-specific theories most are broader psychological theories. I've also noticed that there are a number of big-hitting career theories that I haven't included. I haven't included them because they don't help me, but I might need to spend some time working out why that is. 

Career Theories in Action: How

As I mentioned earlier, it's easy to see how the process models influence my practice, but with the theories that help to explain the nature of career, the influence is a bit more subtle. I think I can see four ways that they help

1. They help me to understand what is going on with my clients - they offer a shortcut which can help me to see what's going on. This is useful because:
1. It helps me to empathise which makes me a better practitioner
2. It helps me to work out what to do next - what questions to ask, what approaches to use and what direction to take the conversation in
2. I sometimes share the theories explicitly with clients. This offers clients:
1. Validation: it's amazing what an impact it has when clients can see that they are not alone, not strange, not abnormal, and that what they are going though is 'a thing' that lots of other people have experienced too. 
2. Reassurance: if clients can see that other people emerged unscathed from this process, and have found a way through, it can be hugely encouraging to them.
3. For me personally:
1. It's interesting. I'm just interested in people's careers and I just like understanding how this part of the world works
2. It boosts my confidence. I feel more certain that the approaches that I'm using are the right ones and are likely to do what they need to
3. It helps with my credibility. The joy of a Rogerian, person-centred approach is that the client solves all their own problems and provides all of their own solutions. This involves a huge amount of skill on the part of the practitioner, but the more skilled you are, the less the client notices what you have added. But the career theory aspect of my professional expertise is more visible, and makes me feel that my skills and knowledge are more likely to be noticed. This is of course linked to the previous point about confidence, but I think that it's important to our clients and to our profession as a whole that we are seen as experts from the outside.

So that's what I use and how I use it, and I definitely think this makes me a better practitioner and adds value to my clients. 

I haven't come across any research evidence that using theories adds value in career conversations, and I'm sure that career conversations can be hugely helpful without any of this. But that's what people get from talking to their friends and family about careers. What they get from us needs to be a bit different, otherwise what is the point? We need to offer something that our clients can't get elsewhere, and for me, a knowledge of these kinds of theories offers exactly that. 

There is still a job to be done, in making sure the theories are relevant and accessible, making sure that practitioners have the time and motivation to learn about them, and making sure we are all equipped to integrate theories in our practice. And some empirical research would be great, if anyone has a bit of time on their hands...

Career inaction and the psychology of doing nothing

I've come across a new theory that I'm quite excited about. The Theory of Career Inaction (Verbruggen and de Vos, 2020) seems to offer a good explanation of a phenomenon that I have come across many times in my coaching, but haven't ever quite understood. The theory unpicks what's going on with clients who know where they want to go and know what they need to do, but who still do nothing. There is, apparently, a whole wealth of research into 'the psychology of doing nothing' (who knew?) and Verbruggen and De Vos have taken some of their understandings and findings and applied them to career development in the form of their new Career Inaction Theory.

I'll try and give an overview here, but the details of the paper are at the bottom if you want to find out more. 

There are, it seems, two typical human tendencies which are to blame: the tendency to delay decisions, and the tendency to avoid taking action. I'm sure we can all recognise these in ourselves, or others.

The doing-nothing psychologists talk about three inertia-enhancing mechanisms.

1) Fear and anxiety. This stops people from taking action, and these feelings are often exacerbated by uncertain outcomes.

2) Short term-ism. People are more focused on what happens in the short term than the long term, leading them to prioritise short term comforts over long term gains.

3) Cognitive overload. When decisions are too complex, or involve too much information or too many variables, people may become paralysed and avoid the issue altogether. 

These three things which prevent us from acting are all quite powerful, but are implicit, meaning that we don't realise the impact they are having on us. This makes it hard for people to identify or articulate them.

Thinking about career decisions in the light of these three 'inertia mechanisms', it becomes quite clear why career inaction is so common: 

1) career decisions almost always have an uncertain outcome - you don't ever really know what the new job is going to be like until you actually do it - so that contributes to fear and anxiety

2) career choices very often involve short term losses - giving up a stable, familiar, known-quantity, and sometimes an income and a secure future, for the possibility of a better future, some way down the line.

3) Career decisions are complex and uncertain and there are too many variables and too many options. This all places huge demands on our brains, leading to cognitive overload.

There some situations that make career inaction either more or less likely, and it can be useful to spend some time exploring these factors with your clients.
1) A clearly crystalised desired future. If clients can find out more about the options they are considering, and put some time into visualising a clear positive future, this can lead to less fear and anxiety, and less cognitive overload.
2) Making a small change is easier than making a significant change, so if individuals can either identify a small first step, or reframe their plans to make them feel less major, they may feel that it is a less risky thing to do.
3) A deadline helps. If there is no clear window within which the individual has to make the decision, they are much more likely to believe that something better will come up, and will be less motivated to take advantage of any opportunity. Encouraging a client to set their own deadline for action can be useful.
4) Social norms. People's views about the acceptability of changing direction will be shaped by the norms of behaviour in their social circles. If their friends, family and colleagues are comfortable making changes, the individual will feel that their choice is less risky. A coach could help by encouraging the client to identify people they know who have made changes, and reflect on whether their own views have been unduly influenced by others.

Career coaches can thus have a useful part to play in encouraging action, but they can also have a positive impact when working with clients who have already failed to act. 

People who have let opportunities pass them by through inaction will often spend time thinking back to what might have been. The authors describe this as counterfactual thinking and suggest it can focus on what they could have done (the process) or what they could now be doing (the outcome). 

For some, these counterfactual thoughts can be linked to regret, in which case they can lead to self-blame, low satisfaction, low self-esteem and even poorer physical health. For others, who have managed to find a good story they can tell themselves to explain their behaviour, it can lead to a sense of relief. To help clients deal with a sense of regret, coaches can encourage them to understand why they made the choices they did, and help them to forgive themselves. 

The authors also noted that career inaction can easily lead to what they call inaction inertia: having refused to strive for one career opportunity, people seem less inclined to strive for another. The reason for this is that it's more difficult to convince ourselves that ignoring the first possible opportunity was a good idea, if we subsequently make the decision that we want to pursue to second opportunity. Career coaching can help clients unpick these complicated subconscious reactions and can free people up to make better choices in future. 

That's my brief summary of the theory. I think it's really interesting and gives us some useful ideas to help us identify what's going on with our clients, and some practical ways in which we can help. 

Verbruggen, M., & De Vos, A. (2020). When people don’t realize their career desires: toward a theory of career inaction. Academy of Management Review, 45(2), 376-394.

Does career coaching work? A look at the empirical evidence.

Career coaching is a bit fuzzy and ill-defined. It's been around as a term for some time in practice, both within the career development world, as an alternative or adjunct to career guidance or careers advice, and as a specialism within coaching. But the empirical evidence base to offer support for its effectiveness is sorely lacking. 

Just to clarify what career coaching is, my definition (Yates, 2013) suggests that it can take place in a one to one or a group context, that it is underpinned by a non-directive, non-judgemental, humanist philosophy, and that it draws on the practice or understanding of theories, models and approaches from the fields of both coaching psychology and career development. 

Career coaches looking to feel confident about the empirical evidence base behind their work, can take comfort in the evidence base underpinning coaching (see my earlier blog post for an overview: https://coachingincareers.blogspot.com/2018/03/) and career guidance (see Everitt et al., 2018 a review). But if you are looking for evidence that explores career coaching specifically, there is much less to draw from. 

The last few years can offer a few examples of studies that show the positive impact of career coaching. 

Evidence suggests that career coaching leads to higher psychological capital (Archer & Yates, 2017); reconciling work and life roles with values and needs (Brown & Yates, 2018); reduced career ambivalence (Klonek et al., 2016) (through MI); career optimism, career security and career goals (Ebner, 2019); and career optimism, and career planning (Spurk et al., 2015). It also leads to enhanced job search performance (Lim, Oh, Ju & Kim, 2019).

Group coaching has been shown to have a positive impact on career decision making self-efficacy, career planning and career decidedness with German adolescents (Jordan, Gessnitzer & Kauffield, 2016).

Some studies have also looked at career coaching within organisations, finding that the career coaching itself improves staff retention (Dugas, 2018) and job satisfaction (Fassiotto et al., 2018) and also that even having a policy that includes an offer of career coaching is linked to improved institutional satisfaction (Ling, Ning, Change & Zhang, 2018).

These papers provide an interesting starting point but we really need much more - qualitative exploratory studies, and quantitative studies to offer broader generalisations. 

References

Archer, S., & Yates, J. (2017). Understanding potential career changers’ experience of career confidence following a positive psychology based coaching programme. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 10(2), 157-175.

Brown, C., & Yates, J. (2018). Understanding the experience of midlife women taking part in a work-life balance career coaching programme: An interpretative phenomenological analysis. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 16(1), 110.

Dugas, Jerelyn, "Career Coaching: A Study of Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Leaders'" (2018). Dissertations. 210. https://digitalcommons.brandman.edu/edd_dissertations/210

Ebner, K. (2019). Promoting career optimism and career security during career coaching: development and test of a model. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 1-19.

Fassiotto, M., Simard, C., Sandborg, C., Valantine, H., & Raymond, J. (2018). An Integrated Career Coaching and Time-Banking System Promoting Flexibility, Wellness, and Success: A Pilot Program at Stanford University School of Medicine. Academic Medicine (Ovid), 93(6), 881–887.

Jordan, S., Gessnitzer, S., & Kauffeld, S. (2016). Effects of a group coaching for the vocational orientation of secondary school pupils. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 9(2), 143-157.

Klonek, F. E., Wunderlich, E., Spurk, D., & Kauffeld, S. (2016). Career counseling meets motivational interviewing: A sequential analysis of dynamic counselor–client interactions. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 94, 28-38.

Lim, D. H., Oh, E., Ju, B., & Kim, H. N. (2019). Mediating role of career coaching on job-search behavior of older generations. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 88(1), 82-104. doi:10.1177/0091415017743009

Ling, F. Y. Y., Ning, Y., Chang, Y. H., & Zhang, Z. (2018). Human resource management practices to improve project managers’ job satisfaction. Engineering Construction & Architectural Management, 25(5), 654–669.


Spurk, D., Kauffeld, S., Barthauer, L., & Heinemann, N. S. R. (2015). Fostering networking behavior, career planning and optimism, and subjective career success: An intervention study. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 87(1), 134–144.