Applying the Happenstance Learning Theory to Involuntary Career Transitions

The happenstance learning theory (HLT) proposes a model of career counseling that helps clients to build more satisfying personal and work lives. Although reflective listening remains an essential part of the process, HLT is an action‐oriented approach to helping clients to both create and benefit from unplanned events. Success is measured not by what happens during the counseling interview but by what the client experiences in the real world during and after counseling. A case study illustrates how HLT might be applied with a client who has been laid off after 20 years on the job.     

Leaving Science: Gender Differences in Career Continuity Following a Job Loss

This study investigates gender differences in the postdisplacement experience of nonacademic science and engineering (S&E) workers. Using a pooled sample created from the Displaced Worker Surveys conducted between 1994 and 2008, it finds that (1) this S&E work force is particularly vulnerable to job loss and potential career disruption; (2) displaced female S&E workers are more likely than comparable male workers to exit the work force, a gender difference that is conditional on and explained by marital and parental status; and (3) reemployed female S&E workers are also more likely to leave science for non‐S&E occupations, but this gender difference is limited to unmarried workers. A concluding section discusses the implications of these findings for interpreting gender differences in career outcomes.     

A Values-Based Approach to Facilitating Career Transitions

This article outlines a values-based approach to facilitating career transitions. Values provide standards of behavior. People who are unable to engage in work that they deem important violate their standards of behavior and are likely to be dissatisfied with their jobs. Moreover, workers whose values are at variance with those of their supervisors are likely to have differing views of the relative importance of various aspects of the job. If a worker emphasizes aspects of the job that he or she views as important as opposed to those seen as important by the supervisor, low performance appraisals are likely. This may lead to planned or unplanned transitions because of termination. Career counselors can use the approach discussed in this article to facilitate both types of transitions.     

Continuity in Life‐Span Career Development: Career Exploration as a Precursor to Career Establishment

The authors examined continuity in career development from adolescence to middle adulthood by testing the proposition that early developmental task‐coping activity predicts later task‐coping activity. One hundred forty‐six rural high school graduates reported career exploratory activity in 9th grade and 12th grade, occupational choice clarity in 12th grade, and occupational establishment activity 25 years later. Controlling for gender, school grades, and verbosity, occupational choice clarity predicted midcareer establishment activity. The prediction models were somewhat different by gender.     

Career Counseling in a Volatile Job Market: Tiedeman's Perspective Revisited

This article explores implications of Tiedeman's original theory for career counselors. Some components of the theory seem to be compatible with existing volatile job market conditions. Notions of career path recycling, development in reverse, nonlinear progress, and parallel streams in career development are explored. Suggestions are made for counseling interventions and future research using this perspective.     

General Job Satisfaction From a Developmental Perspective: Exploring Choice—Job Matches at Two Career Stages

The authors explored predictions of general job satisfaction at early and middle adulthood and uncovered several findings about developmental processes associated with job satisfaction. Tests of life‐span career theory propositions revealed that neither choice‐job congruence nor gender added significantly to predictions of job satisfaction at 2 career stages. Earlier occupational choice and current job added to predictions of midcareer (modal age 43 years) job satisfaction, especially for men. The predictability of job satisfaction is apparently influenced by the career stage when satisfaction is appraised.     

Midlife Career Transitions of Men Who Are Scientists and Engineers: A Narrative Study

This article summarizes the results of a qualitative study of career transition experiences of middle‐aged male scientists and engineers in the current socioeconomic environment in the United States. The study addresses the effects of the transitions from psychosocial perspectives. The authors selected participants from research organizations, industry, and academic fields. The authors used a narrative approach to collect data and analyzed the data using a grounded theory approach. The results suggest that the major factors that describe the dynamics in the career transition experiences are personhood, relationships, lifestyle, and workplace environment. The findings and their implications in developing coping skills and counseling strategies are discussed.     

Career Navigator: Its Use With College Students Beginning the Job Search Process

This study explored the effects of the Career Navigator program on college student self-rated knowledge and skill in the job search process as compared to a professional development business administration course and a no-treatment control group.     

Involuntary Mental Health Treatment: The Mental Health Consumer as Expert

Involuntary treatment in mental health has existed since society first began trying to tackle the issue of mental illness (Dennis & Monahan, 1996 Dennis, D. L. and Monahan, J. 1996. Coercion and aggressive community treatment: A new frontier in mental health law, New York, NY: Plenum Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Despite controversy on both sides of the issue, involuntary treatment continues to be used in current mental health service delivery. Practitioners and policy makers have engaged in lively debates about the merits of involuntary treatment, but few studies have engaged affected consumers in this discussion. This article reports on a small qualitative study in North Carolina that attempted to collect the stories of mental health consumers who had been involuntarily hospitalized due to symptoms of mental illness at some point in their lives. Study participants were also asked to critique the elements of the contemporary involuntary treatment and offer their ideas about improving it.     

More Than a Job Club,Sister: Career Intervention for Women Following Incarceration

Following incarceration, women face unique challenges in returning to their communities and seeking employment. This qualitative study used interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore the lived experiences of previously incarcerated women as they participated in It's More Than a Job Club, Sister, a spiritually integrated career intervention, and subsequently sought employment. The following 4 superordinate themes emerged describing this experience: (a) It was more than a job club; (b) God gave me a second chance: the impact of faith on recovery and employment; (c) barriers to employment; and (d) looking ahead. The findings indicate the need for a strengths‐based approach to career intervention that builds upon existing skills and emphasizes identity exploration, uncovering core beliefs and vocational values, bridging the gap between goals and barriers, and leveraging interpersonal skills. The findings also indicate that career counseling with female returning citizens is enhanced by incorporating attention to the role of substance abuse/recovery and by attending to the intersection of calling and vocation.     

Family Adaptations to Income and Job Loss in the U.S.

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study examines the extent to which families experience major economic setbacks and how they respond. Families that experience a substantial loss of income or work hours are more likely to cut back on expenditures, receive public assistance, experience divorce or separation, and move. No evidence that partners are able to compensate for a major income loss by increasing their work hours was found. Initial conditions, such as income and assets, the unemployment rate of the area, and race, affect how a family adapts. Families with fewer resources and those who live in areas of high unemployment are more likely to rely on public assistance, and they are less likely to move, increase the work hours of the female head of household, or cut food expenditures.     

Job matching and return to work: Occupational rehabilitation as the link

Return to work after injury or illness is important for the worker and the employer. Medical providers manage and treat the worker with the illness or injury. Except in cases of focused specialists, the medical professional's role is to take care of a patient, rather than empower a worker. As much as there is promotion of the workers compensation health care system to be similar to sports medicine, there are significant dissimilarities. One major barrier is that the medical caregivers do not know the demands of jobs as they would know the details of sports. Thus, there is a gap in returning a worker to function as the medical professional cannot accurately match the worker to specific jobs. A new model of job function matching, based on research and skills of occupational rehabilitation professionals, is proposed to bridge the gap between the medical community, the employers and the workers.     

Career Adaptability of Trauma Survivors: The Moderating Role of Posttraumatic Growth

Impaired functioning in occupational domains is a diagnostic characteristic of posttraumatic stress disorder, and yet the interactions between trauma and career remain understudied. This study examined the relationships between trauma symptoms, posttraumatic growth, and career adaptability in college students who identified as trauma survivors (N = 215). Results indicated that (a) trauma symptoms and posttraumatic growth were both significantly predictive of career adaptability and (b) posttraumatic growth moderated the relationship between trauma and career adaptability. The impact of demographic factors and implications for career counselors and counselor educators are also discussed.     

Reactions to Job Content Plateaus: Examining Role Ambiguity and Hierarchical Plateaus as Moderators

Plateauing research often reveals a negative relationship between job content plateauing (i.e., lacking challenge in one's job) and work attitudes. This study explores situations where job content plateauing is associated with fewer negative work attitudes, revealing role ambiguity (i.e., being unclear about job duties and responsibilities) and hierarchical plateauing (i.e., low likelihood of promotions) as moderators of the job content plateau‐work attitude relationship. Specifically, job content plateaued employees reported greater job satisfaction and organizational commitment if they were not also experiencing a hierarchical plateau. Job content plateaued employees also reported greater job satisfaction when role ambiguity was low.     

Systemic Influences on Career Development: Assisting Clients to Tell Their Career Stories

A challenge for career theory informed by constructivism is how to apply it in practice. This article describes a career counseling intervention based on the constructivist Systems Theory Framework (STF) of career development and the qualitative career assessment instrument derived from it, the My System of Career Influences (MSCI; M. McMahon, W. Patton, & M. Watson, 2005a, 2005b; M. McMahon, M. Watson, & W. Patton, 2005) refection process. The article provides an overview of the STF, describes the MSCI, and illustrates the application of the MSCI in a counseling process with an adolescent.