TYPES AND THEORIES OF CAREER

INTRODUCTION

Theories of career abound, shining light on the myriad of vital underlying traits, factors, and needs that are met by a career, not only for the individual but also for policymakers, educators, and society at large.

TYPES OF CAREER

Career opportunities exist in the formal and informal segments of the labour market. Opportunity is determined by several factors, and depending on whether one enters as employee, entrepreneur or apprentice.

1.    Entering as employee – An employee works for other people on the basis of a contract of employment which stipulates relevant conditions of work such as hours of work, resumption time, pay, allowances and benefits, risk associated with job and mode of determination of contract. Formal organizations often keep a record of description of job and human requirement for all job positions. Opportunity for work presupposes some level of training which will put the individual into different layer of the organisation or ministry he hopes to work for.

2.    As entrepreneur – The entrepreneur participates in the labour market as employer by labour. He owns the means of production, capital, land, equipment, raw materials, and seeks people (employee) to help translate his business objectives. He paid only money and other in-kind rewards to attract, motivate and retrain good workers. His main motive for doing business is profit. Entrepreneur operates as sole proprietors or engages in several types of ownership structure; partnership, limited, private or public liability concerns.

3.     As apprenticeship – Apprenticeship occurs mostly in the informal sector. The apprentice is on a short term training course which will result in his own venture or a period as journey man.

Typically, in Nigeria, the labour market admits many entrants (nationals and foreigners) as employer, employee, or apprentice. Entry preparation exists in the form of school certificates (junior and senior), ordinary and higher diplomas, NCE, B. A or B. Sc degrees, and post graduate degrees such as post graduate diploma (PGD), M.A / M.Sc, M. Phil and PhD degrees. Entry also depend on areas of specialty such as business management, sciences, banking and finance, human resource management, engineering, law and so forth. At lower levels where semi and unskilled labour is required, specialty is not so important. Various skills: manual, technical, or managerial are traded in the labour market and these gives job openings in relevant ministries and Organisations.

THEORIES OF CAREER

The traditional concern of human resources managers has been to match individual abilities to specific jobs. Another concern is more global in nature: that is, individual – organization fit. A career however is not just matching skills with a job. It is a complex alignment to personality, values, interests, aptitudes and competencies with the requirements of work and conditions of the work environment. 

Several theories have been proposed to assist our understanding and provide explanatory framework for career choice of people within the context of several variables bothering on the personality, social support systems, parental/family situation, the labour market context and other indicative factors. Theories help us to make senses out of our experiences by providing explanatory framework for tracing and explaining relationship among seemingly disparate variables.

THEORIES OF CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Of the several career theories here listed John Holland’s and Super’s career theory will be discussed in some detail. These theories are attempts at alignment of experiences with empirical studies.

1.    John Holland’s career typology

2.    Driver’s career concept

3.    Super’s self-expression theory.

4.    Roe’s theory

5.     Lent, Brown and Hackett’s Social Cognitive theory

6.     Ginzberg’s theory

7.     Krumboltz Gottfredson’s social learning theory

Holland’s Personality-Job theory.

John Holland’s (1973) theory is grounded in what he called modal personal orientation or a developmental process established through heredity and the individual’s life history of reacting to the environmental demands. More simply put individuals are attracted to a particular occupation that meets their personal needs and provides them satisfaction. Holland’s theory, derived from a study of the American population, rests on four main assumptions:

1.    In our culture, persons can be categorized as one of the following: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, or conventional.

2.     There are six modal environments: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional.

3.     People search for environments that will let them exercise their skills and abilities, express their attitudes and values, and take on agreeable problems and roles.

4.     Behaviour is determined by an interaction between personality and environment.

Also called Holland’s theory of occupational choice, the theory derived from development, by Holland, of vocational preference inventory questionnaire that contains 160 occupational titles. Respondents indicate like or dislike for these titles and their responses were used to form six personality profiles. A hexagonal diagram showing that the closer two fields or orientations are in the hexagon, the more compatible they are. Adjacent categories are quite similar, while diagonally opposite orientations are dissimilar.

Table 2.1: Holland’s Typology of Personality and Congruent occupations

Although each individual is made up of six types, one type is usually dominant. Most personalities tend to resemble up to three of the six personality factors. Holland’s model of occupational choice, though had left out -3- dimensions of the “Big five” personality traits such as conscientiousness, emotional stability and agreeability, and treating only openness and extroversion, has laid foundation for many career development activities in use today. 

The theory in the overall emphasizes the point that effective career development involves finding a good “fit” between the individual’s personality and the work environment. Several researches have shown support for Hollander’s typology. The theories’ strongest criticism is that it is gender biased. Females tend to score high only in the three personality dimensions; artistic, social and convectional. 

Holland attributes this to the fact that females talents are channelled in such a way that certain occupations are female dominated and others male-dominated. Holland’s typology takes cognitive problem solving approach to career planning and this model has been very influential in vocational counselling. It has been employed by popular assessment tools such as the Self Directed Search, Vocational Preference Inventory and the Strong Interest Inventory. The approach has also resulted in practical resources like the dictionary of Holland occupational codes which applies Holland’s codes to major occupations.

Super’s Self-Expression Theory

1.      People differ in their abilities and personalities, needs, values, interests, traits and self-concepts.

2.      People are qualified, by virtue of these characteristics, for a number of occupations.

3.      Each occupation requires a characteristic pattern of abilities and personality traits, with tolerances for each individual as well as some variety of individual in each occupation.

4.      Vocational preferences and competencies, the situations in which people live and work, and hence their self-concepts change, with time and experience.

5.      This process of change may be summed up in a series of life stages (also called maxicycle) characterised as a sequence of growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and disengagement which consists of developmental tasks. The period between each of the stages are marked by transitions (marked by minicycles) each time a career is punctuated by illness, injury, redundancies social/technological changes or any other socio-economic or personal events.

6.      The nature of career patterns, that is, occupational level attained and the sequence, frequency, and duration of trial and stable jobs is determined by individual’s parental of career socioeconomic, level, mental abilities, education, skills, personality characteristics (needs, interest, values, and self-­concepts) and career maturity and opportunities.

7.      Success in coping with the demands of the environment and of the organisation at any given life­career stage depends on the readiness of the individual to cope with the demands.

8.      Career maturity is a psychological construct that denotes an individual’s degree of development along the continuum of life-stages and substages of the growth through disengagement.

9.      Development through the life-stages can be guided by maturity of abilities, interests, and coping resources, reality testing and development of self-concepts.

10.   The process of career development is essentially of developing and implementing occupational self.­concepts as a synthesis of inherited aptitudes, physical makeup, opportunity to observe and play various roles which meets approval of superiors and peers.

11.   The process of synthesis of and compromise between individual and social factors, self-concept and reality is that of role playing and learning from feedback.

12.   Work satisfactions and life satisfactions depend on the extent to which an individual finds adequate outlets for abilities, needs, values, interests, personality traits and self-concepts within the context of work type and situation that allows for exploration and growth.

13.   The degree of satisfaction people attain from work is proportional to the degree to which they have been able to implement self-concepts

14.   Work and occupation provide a focus for personality organisation for most men and women, though some may focus on peripheral issues like leisure, homemaking, as much as tradition, stereotype, sex role, ethnic, racial and modelling shapes individual preferences.

CONCLUSION

Of the seven career theories listed, two were explained in detail with the encouragement for the students, using the avenue of the self-tutored assignment, to form a comprehensive and critical note on the other five theories. It is obvious that career theories, such as Super’s self-expression, provide comprehensive insights into the factors, dynamics, and course of career from growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance to disengagement.