New Year, New You?

NEW YEAR, NEW WHO?

Brave Starts members often tell us how hard they find it to let go of their ideas about who they are in their search for a new career. On one hand, they want to abandon aspects of jobs they know they dislike – a four-hour commute, pressure to perform. On the other, work gives them a sense of who they are that is important to them – a function in society, or recognition through reward.

Among the most common of new year resolutions are promises to find a new job and ‘live your dreams’. According to recruiter Reed.co.uk, the first working Monday of the year is the busiest day of the year for jobseekers registering and applying for new vacancies. But, disregarding the process of finding a job, how easy is it just to flip a switch to become a new you in the new year?

A growing body of psychological research addresses how work shapes our sense of who we are – our identity – and the effects of voluntary and involuntary career change on that.

In 2014, Bart Wille and Filip de Fruyt published a paper in the Journal of Psychology that reported on the results of a 15-year study tracking 266 college alumni. This study indicated that personality shapes and is shaped by work related experiences and can therefore be a source of personal identity – to a degree, you can become what your work demands of you.

Your decision to look for a new job or career may be an entirely voluntary decision to stick two fingers up to the dire, and ‘live your dreams’. What could possibly go wrong?!

Patrizia Hoyer and Chris Steyaert of the University of St Gallen in Switzerland note how even voluntary career changes are often not experienced as smooth processes. Their study of 30 former management consultants published in 2015 notes how people departing from an expected or normal career progression face difficulty in articulating motives and developing a new ‘sense of self’.

Hoyer and Steyaert note how involuntary career change can pose considerable identity threats associated with downward financial mobility, loss of status, prestige, and self-worth. J. Michael Haynie and Dean Shepherd presented a study of an extreme case of involuntary career change and identity reconstruction in their study of soldiers and Marines disabled by wartime combat.

Haynie and Shepherd told how Aaron would introduce himself to new people by saying, “I’m Aaron; I’m a Marine.” After his injury, Aaron said that he would not introduce himself to new people, because he “didn’t know what to say.” His beliefs about who he was had been radically altered.

Aaron did respond well to a post-injury career transition programme.

Haynie and Shepherd’s study noted how those soldiers and Marines who transitioned well were those who were able to construct a new idea of what their career is and who they are. Other researchers have also noted how some people are more readily able to create and accept new ideas about who they are, whilst others have difficulty or are slow to do so.

It’s not easy. Whether your career transition is voluntary or involuntary, in this new year as in any other, BraveStarts is here to help you create a new story for a new who. ?

Article written by Brave Starts volunteer, Alan Hayes - Career Coach, Part Time lecturer, Citizens Advice Trustee, Ex Engineer who brings his research interests, constructive challenges and supportive manner to the Brave Starts team.

REFERENCES:

Wille, B. and De Fruyt, F. (2014). Vocations as a Source of Identity: Reciprocal Relations Between Big Five Personality Traits and RIASEC Characteristics Over 15 Years. The Journal of applied psychology. 99 (2), p.p. 262-281.

Hoyer, P. and Steyaert, C. (2015). Narrative identity construction in times of career change: Taking note of unconscious desires. Human Relations. 68(12) p.p. 1837-1863.

Haynie, J. and Shepherd, D. (2010). Toward a Theory of Discontinuous Career Transition: Investigating Career Transitions Necessitated by Traumatic Life Events. The Journal of app