Occupational career patterns and career adaptability: An optimal matching analysis

As individuals now navigate in a more unpredictable context of work, job transitions are more likely to occur and the ability to cope with these transitions is crucial for individuals. Career adaptability has been identified as a key construct in vocational psychology and denotes the set of self-regulatory resources helping individuals to adapt to career transitions (Savickas, 2005). As a growing body of research has investigated how individual dispositions impact the development of career adaptability resources and how these resources spread to several beneficial outcomes (see, Rudolph, Lavigne, & Zacher, 2017, for a meta-analysis), there still lacks evidence on how previous work experiences are likely to interact with and impact individuals’ resources to cope with job transitions. In this regard, previous but still limited evidence on job mobility is enlightening regarding the incremental value of studying sequences of mobility over time using panel or retrospective data (Dlouhy & Biemann, 2015). In this presentation, we propose to discuss the usefulness of analysing sequences of job experiences and transitions, using Optimal Matching Analysis (Abbott & Tsay, 2000), for the study of careers and the investigation of professional development outcomes (Kovalenko & Mortelmans, 2014). The presentation will be illustrated by a data set linking career trajectories and career adaptability. 393 participants completed a measure of career adaptability (Savickas & Porfeli, 2012) and indicated their full job history since their entry in the job market. Building upon the new career theory (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996), we hypothesize that transitional career trajectories characterized by more job transitions and external mobility will be more beneficial to career adaptability levels compared to traditional career trajectories rather characterized by internal mobility and fewer job transitions (statistical analyses in progress). Investigating the process of job transition in the long run is likely to provide a fuller and holistic view of professional development over time

Training emotional competence for a successful school-to-work transition: An experimental study

Emotion seemingly play a crucial role during events of meaningful importance for individuals such as the school-to-work or job transitions. The role of emotion in vocational behaviour is gradually grasping researcher’s interest and, the ability to perceive and manage emotions – namely emotional competence – is increasingly considered as crucial for career success (Coetzee & Harry, 2014; Di Fabio, 2012; Di Fabio & Kenny, 2014; Emmerling & Cherniss, 2003). In this experimental study, we propose to test the effectiveness of a structured training in emotional competence in improving last-year university students’ professional development outcomes, that is, career adaptability (Savickas, 2005), career decision self-efficacy, and positive and negative affect. Sixty-three undergraduate students were recruited and randomly assigned to either an experimental (31) or control group (33). The EC training consist of 3-hr sessions per week during 5 weeks. This interval between sessions gave the participants enough time to apply their learning in their daily life. Each session was designed to enhance a specific emotional competence: understanding emotions, identifying emotions, expressing emotions, regulating emotions and utilizing emotions (Mikolajczak, Quoidbach, Kotsou, & Nelis, 2009). The results show that, compared to the control group, the training group displays a significant improvement of emotional competence directly after the training. However, we did not find higher levels of career adaptability and career decision-making self-efficacy after the training. The results are discussed in light of the current progress of the research project. Despite some non significant results, our research contributes to new ideas for intervention in the field of academic and professional counseling

Emotional processes in career adaptation: A longitudinal study in an adult education program

In today’s global work context, the ability to cope with the unpredictability of ongoing changes and job transitions has become crucial, both at the emotional and cognitive level. Individuals are expected to continuously develop their skills to improve their employability (Baruch, 2004) and display both emotional competence/intelligence (Di Fabio & Kenny, 2014) and career adapt-abilities (Savickas, 2005) in order to respond to career changes. Even though the concept of career adaptability has been coined as a key construct in vocational psychology and extensively studied in recent years (see, Rudolph, Lavigne, and Zacher 2017, for a meta- analysis), the literature has been less specific regarding (1) the interplay between adult education and career adaptation and (2) the importance of the emotional processes at play (Hartung, 2011). Within the context of an adult education program, the present study investigates the impact of emotional competence/intelligence on career adaptability and several professional development and work outcomes, i.e., self-perceived employability, job burnout, and positive and negative affect. More precisely, we hypothesized that career adaptability mediates the impact of emotional competence on self-perceived employability, job burnout and positive and negative affect. The data were collected in a repeated-measures longitudinal design in October 2017 (n = 262) and April 2018 in a university adult education program. Using path analysis, cross-sectional results of wave 1 demonstrated a satisfactory fit of our tested model with the data (χ²(6) = 16.9, CFI = .94, RMSEA = .08). Furthermore, using bootstrap estimation (10,000 samples), our results showed that career adaptability mediated the impact of emotional competence on self-perceived employability, positive affect, negative affect and burnout. Results including the second wave of the study will be presented at the conference. At the theoretical level, this study contributes to the growing literature on career adaptability and offers needed longitudinal evidence of the career construction model (Rudolph et al., 2017). At the practical level, this study stresses the importance of emotional and adaptation processes for lifelong learning and adult education. Implications for both research and practice are discussed