Career Decision-Making
overview
Understanding Career Decision-Making Uncertainty
Decision-making uncertainty is neither positive nor negative, it simply exists. It occurs when individuals feel they are making a decision and do not have awareness of the “right” path or option. For some individuals decision-making uncertainty involves taking a break from the process and focusing efforts elsewhere. For others it involves gathering information, either about themselves or their perceived work and school options. Gathering information as a means of coping with decision-making uncertainty can be both adaptive and maladaptive.
Decision-making uncertainty also involves a lack of clarity around the process for making a decision. For some individuals the options and choices are unclear, while others struggle with the decision of choosing from the options available and lacking a decision making process.
Decision-making uncertainty may come across as indecision and fear or anxiety around choosing/not choosing the “right” path. Uncertainty aversion can be a dysfunctional way of coping with lack of clarity. Gathering information about self, vocations and skills is needed.
Uncertainty Management
Importance of uncertainty management
Unmanaged uncertainty can influence career development, the decision-making process and career-related outcomes (such as academic major and job satisfaction; anxiety in committing to a decision; belief in self/self-efficacy).
In an effort to manage uncertainty, some individuals take a maladaptive approach, categorized as uncertainty aversion. Uncertainty aversion is a tendency to fear and avoid uncertainty. There are multiple points throughout the career development process where a person will face uncertainty, often through no fault of their own, but primarily because uncertainty is a naturally occurring part of finding or changing career paths. Uncertainty can exist as a result of being uncertainty about what you need as an individual or because it is unclear whether certain work contexts and environments will be a good fit.
Research has demonstrated that college students who experience higher levels of uncertainty aversion at the beginning of their education tend to experience the following outcomes by the end of their college career: less satisfaction with their major and life satisfaction; less self-efficacy when searching for employment. Overall, uncertainty aversion is a detrimental factor leading to students’ poor career development by the end of college. Based on the research results, finding avenues to support college students and individuals who are in the process of making career-related decisions, via reducing uncertainty aversion would be an important intervention.
In contrast to uncertainty aversion, is the concept of adaptive uncertainty management. The importance of being adaptive is that it allows for a flexibility and openness to experiences that is beneficial in the career development process. Individuals who experience high levels of fear and anxiety around career-related decisions may obsess with career decisions in a manner that limits the options they explore or leads to premature choices. Individuals with adaptive uncertainty management styles tend to adopt adaptive career decision-making strategies, including balancing the need for goal-oriented career preparation and open-minded career exploration.
Coping Strategies
Coping strategies for managing decision uncertainty help with the career decision-making process and in obtaining desirable career outcomes (major and life satisfaction and job search self-efficacy). When coping with decision uncertainty, some additional factors at play tend to be: commitment anxiety, goodness of career choice and personal and contextual factors. The coping strategies explored will encompass each of the factors listed previously.
A manner of dealing with uncertainty anxiety that has proven unhelpful is uncertainty aversion or uncertainty intolerance. To alleviate uncertainty intolerance, it may be helpful for an individual to sense a career calling, cultivate constructivist beliefs or use an assessment to clarify their interests and skills.
Career Calling
Career calling involves deriving a sense of meaning or purpose from work, having the ability to make beneficial contributions to others through work and being guided by an external or internal force towards a particular career. Having a sense of calling is half of the strategy, it is also important for individuals to have access to opportunities to live out their career calling. The focus of the intervention is twofold: first, to provide a space for people to explore how they derive meaning from life and determine if there is a career to which they have been called; second, determine how to access or create opportunities for living out a career calling. Helping an individual to embrace their career calling may help decrease possible uncertainty and increase clarity around actions to take.
Use an Assessment
Regarding personal and contextual factors, it would be worthwhile to consider the age and environment of the individual experiencing decision uncertainty. A coping strategy for individuals in the young to emerging adult age range is to provide support while they experience the pressure of figuring out their identity and sense of self and develop their academic and career interests. This particular time of life can be overwhelming for adults as they are expected to simultaneously determine their identity and their career interests. Providing adults at this stage support through normalization and clarification of needs is beneficial. A possible aim is to assist the individual in developing flexibility rather than seeking full certainty in career decisions and career commitments.
Cultivate Constructivist Beliefs
Research has suggested that if individuals are able to develop the perspective that learning occurs through experience, this may lead to a decrease in decision-making uncertainty. Uncertainty can arise from uncertainty and fear of making the “wrong” choice or wanting to wait until the “right” choice seems clear. By individuals shifting their belief system towards one where learning and the development of what is personally best occurs primarily through experience, the pressure of making the “right” or “wrong” choice may decrease. Rather than dwelling in fear of entering a career that may be a poor fit, the individuals begins to gain experience with viewing decisions and outcomes as opportunities to learn about what the individual desires. The focus turns to taking action around decisions and learning to make sense of one’s experiences in order to gain valuable information about one’s self, interests and skills.