A mudança da identidade profissional em transições de carreira

Abstract

The intensification of competition in business environments in recent decades has caused profound changes in people management models and, consequently, how careers are managed within and outside organizations. In order to achieve greater personal and professional satisfaction, professionals have increasingly held accountable for their development and management of their own career. Therefore, it is usual they transcend the traditional boundaries of organizations, seeking new opportunities and achievements in different occupations or jobs. As a result, career transitions have become more frequent. Recent research in Brazil indicates that 60% of former students of the Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade of Universidade de São Paulo, have had at least one voluntary interruption in their career, so as to endeavor or to reduce or ease the workload. Similar results were found in research studies conducted on businesswomen abroad. Much is known about "when" and "how often" people change careers, but little is known about how they carry that out and what the impacts are on their professional identity. Therefore, this exploratory research intended to understand how the career transition processes occur and what actions people take to reconfigure their professional identity. For this, nine people who made a career transition between 31 and 41 years of age which involved a significant change in their professional role were interviewed. Their career narratives were analyzed through the content analysis method. The results show that career transitions that take place when an individual already has a relevant work history, built over several years, demand a significant effort to redefine the professional identity. It was concluded that this identity's redefinition occurs through a subjective and dynamic sense making process of the perceived differences between a new and a former professional role. This process leads to a change in the perception of who he is, and despite being psychologically distressful, at the end of the transition the individual attains greater integration between who he is and what he does, thereby obtaining satisfaction and professional and personal fulfillment.