Occupational career patterns and career adaptability: An optimal matching analysis

As individuals now navigate in a more unpredictable context of work, job transitions are more likely to occur and the ability to cope with these transitions is crucial for individuals. Career adaptability has been identified as a key construct in vocational psychology and denotes the set of self-regulatory resources helping individuals to adapt to career transitions (Savickas, 2005). As a growing body of research has investigated how individual dispositions impact the development of career adaptability resources and how these resources spread to several beneficial outcomes (see, Rudolph, Lavigne, & Zacher, 2017, for a meta-analysis), there still lacks evidence on how previous work experiences are likely to interact with and impact individuals’ resources to cope with job transitions. In this regard, previous but still limited evidence on job mobility is enlightening regarding the incremental value of studying sequences of mobility over time using panel or retrospective data (Dlouhy & Biemann, 2015). In this presentation, we propose to discuss the usefulness of analysing sequences of job experiences and transitions, using Optimal Matching Analysis (Abbott & Tsay, 2000), for the study of careers and the investigation of professional development outcomes (Kovalenko & Mortelmans, 2014). The presentation will be illustrated by a data set linking career trajectories and career adaptability. 393 participants completed a measure of career adaptability (Savickas & Porfeli, 2012) and indicated their full job history since their entry in the job market. Building upon the new career theory (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996), we hypothesize that transitional career trajectories characterized by more job transitions and external mobility will be more beneficial to career adaptability levels compared to traditional career trajectories rather characterized by internal mobility and fewer job transitions (statistical analyses in progress). Investigating the process of job transition in the long run is likely to provide a fuller and holistic view of professional development over time.