Career is defined as one’s chosen field of work or profession. It goes beyond mere employment; many invest in ongoing education and training to advance their chosen profession.
Career concepts provide individuals with an informed basis to make sound decisions regarding their future. Each career concept can be linked with information processing, decision-making styles, interpersonal needs, and requirements.
Linear
Career concepts represent one person’s ideal vision of how they or should develop their professional life, which has an enormous effect on their activities and competencies over their work life, motivation levels, and success rates – as well as job types they or undertake. Therefore, understanding these concepts is vital so you can select an occupation that matches your preferences and aspirations goals.
The linear career concept refers to rapid movement up the corporate ladder. People who follow this route tend to start in entry-level positions before working their way up through management or executive ranks, often becoming managers or executives. Such careers tend to be driven by power and status while highly interested in leadership and competition.
People who pursue this route can become disgruntled once they reach their organization’s top, yet they don’t feel like they’re progressing in their roles. When this occurs, they may even leave their positions to find something more satisfying; power and status-related factors often fuel this desire, while learning, escaping, or expertise may provide additional stimulation.
Experts typically have long-term commitments to their profession and see success as recognition as one of the leaders in their field. Their success depends on competence and security; typically, this career concept can be found in fields requiring highly specialized knowledge or where expertise is in high demand.
Spirals offer a less conventional view of career success that involves making lateral changes across occupational fields, which offer opportunities to broaden competence and experience and spark creativity and growth. This career concept tends to appear on the edge of industries with many newly graduated workers entering their workplace.
Expert
Expertise in any profession requires excellent proficiency, which often translates into high productivity and efficient solutions for complex issues. Furthermore, experts typically possess strong interpersonal and communication skills allowing them to collaborate effectively with coworkers while being trusted and respected by them all. Unfortunately, experts may experience issues maintaining the ideal work-life balance, thus prompting them to seek new careers to enjoy all aspects of their life better.
Career goals and aspirations vary for every individual; for instance, someone seeking to become a manager might assess his talent, abilities, and potential before choosing the most effective path towards reaching that goal. Joining an organization where they believe there will be greater chances for advancement further on their journey towards the managerial position, they could build up their career further; should one not provide that growth potential, then they may leave it and join another one instead.
People with an expert mindset are driven by power and achievement. They strive to become experts in their respective fields – welding, trial law, or surgery. Working for large corporations often brings prestige as well as financial benefits.
The career concept provides a framework for understanding why and how people transition in and out of jobs, highlighting four distinct career types with their own set of motivations: Linears are driven by status, power, and money; Experts find stability within a specific field stimulating; Spirals seek growth and creativity while Roamers value variety and independence. This concept can assist individuals and organizations alike as they adjust to changing workforce patterns by using this framework effectively in managing employees and increasing retention rates.
Spiral
An undulating plane curve that winds its way around a fixed center point at an ever-increasing or decreasing distance from it; also referred to as a spiral or curlicue. A person in a spiral career moves between jobs at regular intervals – typically five to ten years – to broaden functional exposure while learning new skills and experiences. Individuals in such careers are motivated by personal growth and prefer matrix organizations that offer temporary team assignments with cross-functional functions.
Spiral personalities don’t view career advancement as their top priority; instead, they focus on learning new skills. Once they reach a certain level of success or expertise, they seek new challenges; these learners often sacrifice power or status to expand their knowledge base and seek fresh challenges. Furthermore, spiral types tend to tire quickly of repetitive work experiences and prefer variety as part of a balanced lifestyle.
Change-oriented and unconventional views of career development must be acknowledged; people with such views may be incapable of making explicit and objective decisions regarding their plans, which makes it essential to assess each employee and provide appropriate developmental opportunities.
While linear motivations are typically the norm in most organizations, there is an increasing desire for more flexibility within the workplace. Companies must therefore offer career paths that enable their staff to grow laterally and vertically – this approach to staff development will ensure organizations retain their most valued staff members.
Although assessing individual career concepts is challenging in an everyday decision-making, specific methods exist. For instance, personality tests such as MBTI can provide invaluable information about an individual’s preferences which can then be combined with career concept evaluation results to estimate an individual’s likelihood of succeeding in any particular scenario.
Roamer
Roamers are players or heroes that roam the map, helping all lanes while picking off enemies during steals. Roamers help maintain team tempo, opening rotations on the map and providing timely kills – these factors highlight why having an effective roamer in your team is so vitally important.
The Career Concept Framework suggests that everyone has an ingrained concept about success that informs his or her work as early as childhood or professional beginnings. That set of underlying motives influences his perceptions of work success and motivation, ultimately fuelling high-performance levels across his profession or beyond. Linear people tend to be motivated by power and achievement. At the same time, experts seek expertise, security, and safety, while spirals seek growth, creativity,, and diversity, while roamers need variety and independence in their jobs.
People pursuing careers characterized by independence and variety tend to switch jobs frequently – perhaps every two to three years. Their success may rarely rely on experience; instead, they might explore fields requiring new skill acquisition. They would make great telemarketers or individuals selling products or services directly to consumers.
Managers charged with staffing departments would do themselves a service by taking time to understand each employee’s career concept and motivations before assigning positions. Any misalign between this concept and motivations and workplace tasks could cause discontentment and even cynicism. For example, a man with a wanderer career concept might become frustrated if asked to multi-skill and take on jobs outside his area of expertise; conversely, if this person could communicate their need to remain with the company until an agreed-upon time, then perhaps both parties could come up with mutually satisfactory arrangements that satisfy both parties involved.