Author:

Keywords:

Protean career, Career self-directedness, Career competences, Job mobility, Training, Career satisfaction, Social Sciences, Psychology, Applied, Psychology, protean career, career self-directedness, career competences, job mobility, training, career satisfaction, MANAGEMENT, SUCCESS, WORK, JOB, VARIABLES, 1303 Specialist Studies in Education, 1503 Business and Management, 1701 Psychology, Business & Management, 3505 Human resources and industrial relations, 3507 Strategy, management and organisational behaviour, 5201 Applied and developmental psychology

Abstract:

We examine the learnability, antecedents and outcomes of career self-directedness using a longitudinal dataset of Flemish career counseling clients. The results show that the career counseling clients improved their career self-directedness during the counseling and that this improvement lasted for at least 6 months. Furthermore, we found career self-directedness to be explained in a significant way by self-awareness and adaptability, two competences identified by Hall [Hall, D. T. (1996). Protean careers in the 21st century. Academy of Management Executive, 10(4), 8–16; Hall, D. T. (2004). The protean career: A quarter-century journey. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65(1), 1–13] as crucial for steering one’s career. Also, career self-directedness related positively to training participation, job mobility and career satisfaction. The main implications of our findings for the protean career and the career counseling literature are discussed.