Overview

Jobs and employment are among the most important current issues facing governments and societies around the world, but the question of how to align individuals and their strengths with opportunities in the world of work remains without a widely accepted, evidence-based approach. Most career centers and government-funded employment agencies measure program results with job placement rates and program attendance figures, but these measures fail to indicate sustainable changes in individuals' careers. Tracking whether someone ~got the job says nothing about the alignment between the job and the individual's strengths, interests, and life situation, nor does it say anything about that individual's ability to manage their career for the future when and if he or she leaves that first job. Career development matters because it, and we as Career Professionals can have a positive impact on individuals' personal attributes including hope, confidence, resilience, optimism, personal growth, and curiosity and exploration when we listen to clients' stories in new ways. Using our narrative framework, we've found significant increases in these key personal attributes, which correlate with important career measures including career clarity, job satisfaction, job fit, and alignment between job and career expectations. Career development or perhaps a better term, Career Management Skill, matters because it helps people manage their careers for the future leading to sustainable and positive employment and career outcomes that benefit the individual and society. I approached this by looking at career development so, before considering why career development matters I thought perhaps we could back up a step and focus on why development (of any sort) matters. We consider development the norm in so many life arenas other than a career, using terms like developmentally delayed to describe an individual not progressing as expected or hoped for. Arrested development (i.e., when children stop developing as expected, after what seemed to be a normal beginning) is considered a psychological disorder. Why, then, would we expect a career to be static? People develop it makes sense that their careers would similarly develop to keep up with individual developmental changes. In our Career Engagement model, we illustrate how an individual can outgrow a specific job when his or her increased capacity begins to outweigh the challenge of the position. Similarly, Csikszentmihalyi, in his work on Flow, spoke to the importance of matching skills to challenge. Career development is inherently important to achieving and maintaining Career Engagement and/or Flow. Without career development, work can become boring and meaningless. With career development, adjustments can be made to continue to achieve an optimal fit between workplace expectations and individual/organizational capacity to get the work done.

Full Product Details

9798352466100

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available