I've been doing a lot of thinking about career theories lately, and how we can use them in our career coaching practice. This is one of the most popular theories in the US, and I think is an easy one to incorporate into practice.
Introduction
Career Construction Theory is the brainchild of Mark Savickas, one of the big beasts in career academia over the last generation. Career Construction is all about agency – the idea that people believe that they themselves have some control and power over their own lives and futures. Its critics argue that he goes a bit far down this line, almost ignoring the impact of environmental factors, but we do know that a sense of agency can make a big difference to an individual’s chances of career success. Career Construction Theory holds that people construct their own careers and rather than slotting into any kind of pre-planned, pre-destined, tried and tested career path, people can and should take control and design their own careers.
Savickas aims to combine the best of three different groups
of career theories, taking some ideas from matching theories, some from the
developmental approaches, and some from narrative theories. Career construction
suggests that people should think about what kinds of jobs they are suited to
(matching), how people learn to cope with the challenges of careers and work
(developmental), and why people make the choices they do – how they tell their
stories (narrative). He describes Career Construction as a theory that is fit
for the modern world, with all of its complexities and shape-shifting. It’s a
theory that can account for the whole career lifespan, and encourages people to
keep developing, reflecting, adjusting and striving throughout their whole
careers, making choices that allow them to have a lifetime of meaningful career
fulfilment.
Key Ideas in Career Construction Theory
At the heart of Career Construction Theory is the idea that careers are all about what matters. What matters to you, and how your choices matter to other people. It’s about the meaning that people put on their experiences – the way they interpret what has happened to them, and the meaning that they want to find in their lives and careers. Career Construction Theory is very linked to narrative approaches to counselling – seeing a person’s career as a story – one that can be told and re-told in different ways at different times. It’s notable that Savickas very much talks about ‘life’ themes, and indeed, one of his other big ideas is called Life Design. In both of these, he is making the point that you can’t really separate career and life.
Vocational Personality
This aspect of Career Construction Theory builds on the more traditional kind of matching approaches. It focuses on what you as an individual might have to offer an employer, and how you might look for a job where those attributes are useful. Your vocational personality includes things like your career interests, strengths, needs and values. This mirrors the traditional matching approaches, such as Holland’s RIASEC model, which we covered in Chapter 8. But Career Construction Theory conceptualises these attributes and their relationship with work slightly differently. Rather than a set of fixed characteristics that need to fit neatly with a rigid work role, Career Construction Theory sees these characteristics as far more flexible –as social constructs rather than tangible attributes; our interpretations of ourselves, or stories that we tell ourselves, rather than facts. In terms of career construction, these characteristics are a good starting point for thinking about how we want to see ourselves, who we want to become and how we can adapt both our selves and our jobs to mould to each other.
Career Adaptability
Building on that idea of being able to adapt, then Career
Adaptability is the third key concept within Career Construction Theory. The
assumption is that both individuals and jobs need to adapt - both to each other
and to the every shifting environment, re-inventing themselves all the time to
keep relevant and to face the future. I’ll go on to talk about this idea in
more detail in part three of this Chapter.
Using Career Construction Theory in Practice
To apply Career Construction Theory in career counselling, Savickas developed the Career Style Interview. This is a series interesting questions to help your clients to tell, understand and reflect on their own stories. Savickas talks about these questions allowing people to identify their ‘life themes’ and it can definitely be valuable to think about any common threads running through your clients’ answers.
The full Career Style Interview has nine quite meaty questions. Asking all of the questions is time consuming and probably too much for the context in which most of us practice, but these are the ones that I find lead to the most insightful conversations, and asking even one or two can lead to some fruitful discussions. If you like these and want to know more, you can find the full list here: http://vocopher.com/CSI/CSI.pdf
Career Style Interview (adapted from Savickas)
1. Who
do you admire? OR Who did you admire when you were growing up?
a.
In what ways are you similar or different from them?
b.
What advice would they give you?
c.
How would your life / career be different if you were
to live your life more like them?
2. What
are you favourite TV shows / podcasts / social media influencers
a.
What do you like about them?
3. What
is your all time favourite story?
a.
Who is your favourite character – why do you like them
and in what ways are you similar to or different from them?
4. What
do you do with your free time?
a.
What do you get from it?
5. What
is your favourite motto or saying OR what saying would you have printed on a
t-shirt?
a.
Why do you like that motto?
b.
What would be different if you lived your life more
according to that saying?
As with so many career exercises,
the value is not in the question or the answers, but in the analysis and
reflection you get your client to do afterwards. Most of these questions can
reveal something about what really matters to them, and what kind of life they
want to lead but you do need to spend time with them getting them to unpick
what they think their answers say about them. Make sure you ask your client
what they feel their answers say about their values, and use them as a starting
point for a conversation about their identity and what a well-lived life would
look like for them.
