From identity to career planning

The current massive disruption of work poses increased challenges to career planning. Wide audiences are experiencing confusion, insecurity and anxiety over their future. Career planning is becoming no less a challenge than search for identity in the new world. The concept of identity crisis as part of development in youth launched by the psychoanalyst Erik H. Eriksonin (1980) appears to depict feelings of wider audiences amidst the change. The following program will initiate self-directed career planning which gets its springboard from the discovery of one's identity. This creates interest, engagement and knowledge to developing one's career and competence.

Seeking identity

In the first phase, the counselee seeks and finds one's identity by choosing among 20 personified characters, “Experts in work”, from a Quality seeker to an Optimist, six most relatable to oneself. This provides an answer to the identity question: Who am I at work. Descriptions of the socially equally desirable expert characters cover their ways of working, thinking, core competencies as well as suitability to different educational, occupational and job contexts. E.g., “Quality seekers” are best suited to technical jobs with more focused responsibilities. The playful and mind captivating seek and find phase helps counselees discover their work identity and core competencies i.e., answer the question: Who am I at work. Try it for yourself.

Elaborating identity

Often enough the seek and find phase creates a sufficient springboard for arousing counselees' self-driven navigation in the world of education and work. An optional continuation involves elaboration of the person's work identity where he/she takes a standardized personality test with 224 questions used in recruitment (Work Personality Inventory; WOPI). WOPI yields a comprehensive, detailed and empirically well-validated measures of the expert characters. Testing widens the perspective from the six self chosen expert characters to all the twenty characters. The test scores indicate an internal profile of the characters: which of them are most and which least favored by the person, thereby enriching the picture of the individual. In addition to the internal profile of expertise, the test scores standardized to a population enable comparison to other people.

Comparing sought and elaborated identity profiles

Important scrutiny takes place when the self-chosen and test-produced identity/expert profiles are compared. Generally they tend to coincide thereby confirming the validity of the found competencies. However, when the test results don't coincide with the self chosen six expert characters, confusion arises the discussion of which adds important information. For example, social desirability effects tend to appear in the self-chosen identity profiles which are controlled for in construction of personality tests. However, standardized testing can also reveal hidden expert characters and competencies that the counselee was totally unaware of. But, neither profile is considered as the absolute truth which is always concluded by the counselee. The back and forth comparison of the profiles invites lively and multifaceted, many corners illuminating perusal thus elaborating the counselee's awareness of one's work identity and attendant core competencies. The following presents examples of cases where the test has produced important elaboration of identity of young professionals.

Police officer

With regard to the aforementioned social desirability effects, a young police officer's choices in the area of planning appeared as if they were taken directly from brochures of police work: concrete perception (Practical viewer) and tried-out solutions based on reason and logic (Analytic thinker). But, the WOPI test taken in the elaboration phase reflected an almost opposite picture that is, intensely creative way of thinking and planning of things (Idea generator and Intuitive thinker), for which it may be quite challenging to find proper use in standard police work. However, as usually being more important than planning activities, the person fulfilled perfectly the core behavioral requirements in police work. Both the self-chosen and test produced results showed Action leader as the first choice character. The second choice character, Communicator changed into Advisor of others in the testing phase which may be even more important than communication as a core competency in police work. All in all, the philosophical question may arise whether any perfect person-job fit even exists.

Psychologist

Job burnout was included as a theme in the career counseling of a young psychologist working in health care. In the self-choice phase the individual identified with the detail oriented, perfection seeking and time consuming Quality seeker, thinking that such an attitude was the prime reason for developing burnout symptoms. The explanation is in itself logical, perfectionism is often related to (in addition to situational factors) etiology of burnout. But, according to test results, the Quality seeker score reached an average level in norms which excludes the individual's view on excessive perfectionism. Instead, test results displayed very strong listening to others, even up to the level where one abandons one's own interests in favor of serving others. According the norms, only six individuals in hundred receive the same or higher score on the Listener dimension. Unquestioned listening to others and settling oneself to serving others may be the real reason for the burnout symptoms. Uncontrollable identification with patient suffering burdens care professionals excessively nor is it appropriate in realizing treatment goals.

HR professional

The third example comes from a situation where the test reveals a competency which the counselee was only faintly or not at all aware of. The individual works in a smaller organization as a HR generalist responsible for multifaceted, daily changing practical duties. The individual expressed dissatisfaction with the job without being able to specify reasons for it. The test displayed a high score on the Complex viewer dimension which means that the person perceives things on a highly abstract level in reference to the norms. In contrast to Practical viewers, Complex viewers perceive things more by contextualization and seeking broader and deeper-probing pictures. Instead of tackling with daily changing practical duties the counselee could use the broad perception competency better in planning centered HR jobs, dealing with research and HR policy-level issues. This piece of information came as a surprise although the individual had expressed interest in pursuing further education on top of the current degree.

Research

An abstract of the lesson was presented at the European Conference of Psychological Assessment (ECPA) in Barcelona in 24.7.2025. The development of the concept received its impetus on student groups, first with MBA students from a New York university on visit to Aalto University and thereafter with organizational behavior and psychology student groups in Tallinn University. They have been given facilitation feedback on group and individual level. Follow-up studies are projected on the two Tallinn groups. The book "From identity to competence - amidst disrupting work" is in preparation.