Adaptable careers: maximizing less and exploring more.(Articles)

Today, young adults are expected to decide between educational, vocational, and job options and to make the best choice possible. Career literatures emphasize the importance of young adults' career decision making but also acknowledge the problems related to making these decisions. The authors argue that career counselors could support clients' intuitive processing of career information and help their clients to develop a positive and flexible view of the self and the environment while diminishing concerns about accountability for and irreversibility of career decisions. The authors argue that career adaptability rather than decision making should become the focal concept of career theory and practice.

Most people struggle with making career decisions, for example, when they have to choose between available educational, vocational, and job options. Especially young people who face the transition from school to work may experience indecision, often feeling unable to decide what career they wish to pursue. Career indecision is prevalent among college students and is frequently experienced as a burden and associated with feelings of anxiety and lowered self-esteem (Betz & Serling, 1993). Generally, humans find it difficult to use rational strategies when making decisions (e.g., Anderson, 2003). Moreover, they are sometimes unhappy with their decisions once they are finally made. Yet, many career theories emphasize conscious decision making as a necessity for healthy career development. This pressure on career decision making as reflected in daily practices together with the difficulties that young people experience with making career decisions may cause them to feel insecure and unhappy.

In this article, we question the need for younger people to in fact decide about their careers, given the traditional definition of the career concept. Using the literature on decision making and cognitive processing as a basis, we argue that conscious decision making is a less optimal strategy for making career decisions than is often thought. In addition, taking a perspective on the concept of careers that is focused on the future, we argue that traditional career theories are no longer adequate and should be replaced by new concepts that emphasize career adaptability, such as malleable selves, mastery of different roles, and short-term decision making.

Decision Making: Rationality and Intution

Each day, people have to make many choices and decisions. The moment they enter a shop, they start the process of choosing and deciding: What do I eat today, what brand of a product should I buy? Today, people live in a world with numerous choices. The economic prosperity of Western society has provided them with this choice luxury. Moreover, modern societies emphasize people's self-determination and freedom of choice (Schwartz, 2000). Many aspects of human life have become self-determined: People can choose whether they will marry or whether they will have children, and they have the freedom to choose their career. Young adults have more freedom in fashioning their career than their parents did at the time they were young. Although social mobility is often difficult (e.g., Leong, 1995), children are not necessarily bound to the economic class of their parents that dictated the educational level they could reach. Young adults arc often not constrained to do the type of work their parents did. Instead, they have the opportunity to choose from a long list of vocational and career options. This seems like a luxury but may not be experienced as such.

Decision making is difficult. It involves a complex process of cognitive reasoning and, therefore, it costs time and effort. Moreover, decisions regarding one's vocation and career usually have to be made under conditions of great uncertainty. Decision making generally encompasses five stages: defining the problem, understanding the underlying mechanisms, formulating plausible alternatives, prioritizing alternatives, and evaluating the outcomes (Peterson, Sampson, Lenz, & Reardon, 2002).

Defining the decision problem is the very first obstacle with which young people are confronted. They struggle with questions such as What are the specific goals I strive for in my future career? Should I focus on a short-term or a long-term perspective? Should I go for what I prefer right now or for more realistic opportunities, eventually at the expense of my actual preferences? In addition, the overall picture of the decision-making task is often unclear. A good overview of plausible alternatives is usually missing (i.e., the options in the labor market and exactly what these options include), as is a clear idea of one's self-concept (i.e., knowledge regarding who one is and of one's capacities and interests). It seems almost impossible to make a conscientious choice when the two components of that choice, the self and the environment, are highly ambiguous. Moreover, if all choice options are listed, it yet remains difficult to rank-order them because it is uncertain which decision strategy may lead to a good decision. Also, there may be no single correct or best option, so there is no guarantee that the decision will ensure success (Germeijs & De Boeck, 2002).