Career Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Career Management - Essay Example The present scenario has been defined as a â€Å"do-it-yourself career management† (Patton & McMahon, p.26) where the individuals are faced with the challenge of constructing their career in the changing environment. It is seen that the choice of occupation is not a onetime decision. Rather it can be considered to a process of development which occurs through a number of stages and sub stages. Young children start believing that they can do almost everything. While the adults’ decision or the career choice is based on factors like skill sets, economic factors or their education and training requirements. John Holland (1960) was one of the major contributors in the field of career development. His contribution to the field was the creation of a hexagonal model that is based on the perspectives put forward by Parsons. According to Holland, the workplace was divided into six work environments and the populace was comprised of six types of personalities, namely â€Å"reali stic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional† (Virtual Habitats, p.1). The hexagon has been presented in the figure below. Figure 1: Holland's six environment/personalities (Source: Virtual Habitats, p.2) The ideas which are included in the theory are as follow: Most of the people can be assigned one of the categories of the six types of personalities. The work environments are also of six types, namely â€Å"realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional† (Virtual Habitats, p.2). The work environments that people search for depends on their skills and abilities, expression of values and attitudes, and their views on different roles and problems. The behaviour of an individual is an outcome of the interaction of his personality with the environmental characteristics (Virtual Habitats, p.2). The more close a person comes towards a work environment that he finds compatible to his abilities, the greater will be his satisfa ction. The recent scholars have been increasingly focusing on the process of decision making and its relationship with career development. The cognitive information process (CIP) as put forward by â€Å"Peterson, Sampson, Reardon and Lenz† (Virtual Habitats, p.4) are the three domains based on which the choice of career is made. The decision making skills domain comprises of the five information processing skills which are communication, analysis, synthesis, valuing and executing (Virtual Habitats, p.4). The CIP model is illustrated the figure below. Figure 2: The CIP model (Source: Virtual Habitats, p.2) The base comprises of self knowledge and knowledge of the occupations. The nature of information with people regarding themselves and the work usually differs from one another. Scholars claim that this self knowledge is more based on the perceptions than in facts. It involves analyzing ones interests, abilities and skills. The individuals’ needs require thorough analy sis though the decision making phase which should be suited for his unique personality (Wasylow, Mellott & Martin, p.1). It also involves analysis of the occupation itself like places where the occupation exist, the payments they make or their outlook. It requires thorough analysis of the labour market. Answer to Question No: 2 Primary Research The primary research was conducted on three