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Career Management: Taking Control of the Quality of Work Experiences

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International Handbook of Career Guidance

The job-for-life contract between employer and employee has been replaced by an insecure and uncertain job market. Job security is no longer dependent on length of service; loyalty to an employer and career progression in the conventional sense, that is, along fixed career lines, is not a realistic option anymore. These changes in the nature of jobs and career development are due to flatter and rapidly changing organisations, which will remain to be the dominant characteristic of most companies in the future.

This chapter focuses on the first aspect of individual career management, that is, personal development. There are several ways in which individuals may develop themselves. For example, employees may engage in job-related training in order to broaden and deepen their abilities and skills, or they may obtain higher levels of proficiency by enlarging their experiences within a certain work domain. All these activities help to increase individuals’ human capital, that is, their value on the labour market, which will lead to higher ascendancy rates and salaries (Becker, 1975). Indeed, personal investments in education and work experiences are considered the strongest and most consistent predictors of career success (Tharenou, 1997).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Annelies E. M. Van Vianen, Irene E. De Pater & Paul T. Y. Preenen

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  1. Annelies E. M. Van Vianen
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  2. Irene E. De Pater
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  1. University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

    James A. Athanasou

  2. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

    Raoul Van Esbroeck

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Van Vianen, A.E.M., De Pater, I.E., Preenen, P.T.Y. (2008). Career Management: Taking Control of the Quality of Work Experiences. In: Athanasou, J.A., Van Esbroeck, R. (eds) International Handbook of Career Guidance. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6230-8_14

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