Career Development: Exploration and Planning

The motivating function of thinking about the future: Expectations versus fantasies.

“…As failures to solve impending life tasks affect the mastery of subsequent life tasks (Havighurst, 1948(Havighurst, /1972, our findings imply that positive fantasies can have long-term costs with respect to a person's personality development (Cantor & Harlow, 1994). For example, the first job is the basis for successive job positions a person holds during his or her life (Super & Hall, 1978), with both status and wages increasing over time. Thus our findings of positive fantasies predicting low success in entering professional life imply that positive fantasies may be problematic not only for the life task of beginning a career.…”

Career-specific parental behaviors, career exploration and career adaptability: A three-wave investigation among Chinese undergraduates

“…Through self-exploration, individuals can thoroughly examine their own interests, values, and experiences and thus form a clear image about who they are and how these internal attributes shape their future careers (Blustein, 1989; Flum & Blustein, 2000;Stumpf et al, 1983). Environmental exploration enables individuals to make more informed career decisions by collecting information on jobs, organizations and occupations (Blustein, 1992(Blustein, , 1997 Neimeyer, 1988;Super & Hall, 1978;Werbel, 2000). It has been established that both self-exploration and environment-exploration activities play important roles in helping individuals to identify suitable job opportunities, achieve better employment and cope with the difficulties and challenges in their career transitions (Zikic & Klehe, 2006;Werbel, 2000).…”

“…First of all, career exploration promotes the search for valuable information related to self-appraisal or adjustment to different jobs and occupations (Blustein, 1992(Blustein, , 1997Super & Hall, 1978), which yields useful insights that advance a person to a gratifying career choice, therefore career exploration is likely to promote students' strength in exploring various situations and potential roles (career curiosity). As previous research has showed that career exploration correlates positively with future-oriented mental process, such as goal-directedness (Blustein, 1989), personal growth initiative (Robitschek & Cook, 1999) and the formation of ego identity (Blustein, Devenis, & Kidney, 1989), we thus propose that by collecting and processing relevant information, career exploration also motivates individuals to seriously consider their future career possibilities and prepare for these possibilities (career concern).…”

Future-Oriented Coping and Job Hunting Among College Students

“…In a person's career, the transition from school to work is a critical stage (Super & Hall, 1978). Individuals in this stage may encounter many difficulties, for example, seeking a job.…”