ISSN 0798 1015

Vol. 39 (# 25) Year 2018. Page 20

Psychological Features of Career Strategies of the Youth in Russian Province

Características psicológicas de las estrategias profesionales de la juventud en la provincia rusa

Oksana V. LYUSOVA 1; Lyudmila Ye. SOLYANKINA 2; Elena Yu. MAZUR 3

Received: 15/02/2018 • Approved: 18/03/2018

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Methodology

3. Results

4. Conclusions

Bibliographic references

1. Introduction

In today's changing world a person has to be a successful professional obtaining high level of competences that allow not only to solve professional problems, but also to be a mature self-developing personality, capable to absorb new information and to adapt it to changing economic and professional conditions within the labor market (Boccia G. et.al., 2017; Dragolea L. et.al., 2017; Galustyan O.V. 2015, 2017; Hunt J.M. et.al., 2017; Komarova E.P. et.al., 2017; Stosic L. and Stosic I, 2013; Seryakova S.B. et.al., 2018; Uryadova T. et.al., 2017; Villarreal J.L. et.al., 2016).

Scientists (Chang W. and Koo Y., 2017; Christensenk S. 2017; Eshelman A.J. and Rottinghaus P.J., 2015; Grings J.A. and Jung C.F, 2016; Murale V et.al., 2016) pay attention to the problems of professional socialization of the youth, the growth of unemployment among young people. Scientists (Christensenk S. 2017; Siefert K.H. and Eckhardt H.H.,1977) suppose that not only economic problems (economic instability, low wages, lack of work experience among graduates of educational institutions), but also psychological problems of professional socialization of young people are the reasons associated with the internal uncertainty of the professional path, the inexpressiveness of career orientations or the inadequacy of abilities and opportunities for real professional requirements. We pay special attention to socialization of the youth in Russian province in our paper. Socialization of young people in Russia is closely connected with social and economic asymmetry of Russian regions, which are of different levels in their economic and social development, innovation potentials and other important factors, which determines the different conditions of career strategies of young people) (Seryakova S.B. et.al., 2018; Solyankina L.E., 2017).

Career planning plays an important role for young people and for their parents, since active career management is the key to achieving the peaks of professionalism and success in life. The state, state employment services, employers are interested in an adequate choice of career planning for the young people. So, career and professional orientation is not only a task for young people, psychologists and educators, but becomes a task of the state level.

The aim of our research is to highlight the characteristics of the career strategies of the modern youth in Russian province and to develop a program for the formation of the effective career strategies.

Analyzing the aspects to the understanding career in modern scientific research (Fan W. and Leong F.T.L., 2016; Ismail S. 2017; Jeong Y.and Seo Y.N., 2016; Kostina E.Y. and Orlova N.A., 2016; Rosvall P.Å., 2017; Schlee R.P. and Karns G.L., 2017; Solyankina L.E. 2017), we relied on the definition of career in a broad sense as professional advancement and in a narrow sense as a movement to the peak of their personal achievements. Peculiarities of the career path determine such personality factors as anxiety, emotional stability (or instability). Sociability, openness and willpower, which facilitate promotion are equally important. And, on the contrary, career can suffer because of suspiciousness or suspicion. The maximum results are achieved when professionalism is combined with high personal qualities (Galustyan O.V. et.al., 2017; Schlee R.P. and Karns G.L., 2017).

Super D. (1952) singled out four types of career:

1) stable (constant promotion in the chosen profession);

2) the usual (the periods of promotion alternate with periods of stagnation);

3) unstable (it is characterized by two or more professional samples);

4) chaotic (for it is characterized by multiple samples without stable periods).

Career strategies are meant a specific system of actions designed to adapt and develop career and changing conditions and the content of professional activities to achieve career goals.

Two circumstances become especially urgent in the process of forming life strategies for students:

1) age identification,

2) student youth as a social group did not acquire readiness for concrete practical actions which are necessary for the formation of life strategies.

It should be concluded that the diversity of typological models of life strategies of young people can be divided into three groups such as:

- due to the content and form of the manifestation of the individual's subjectivity, characterized by the fact that the life strategy is formed by the subject himself/ herself, and social and economic conditions affect the content of strategies, but they are not dominant;

- due to the nature of the influence of conditions of life, when the process of designing life strategies is dominated by external social and economic conditions (type of settlement, social and ethnicity, region of residence);

- due to the social stereotypes and behavior, in which the content of youth's life strategies can be associated with the prevalent in society normative values and attitudes.

The experimental group was formed from the students of the first and of the fourth course of Volzhsky branch of Volgograd State University, Russia. The total number of participants were 42 people, of which 22 girls and 15 boys aged from 17 to 20 years old.

We studied the features of career representations of students at the initial stage of training (the first-year course students) and the final stage of training (the fourth-year course students). Based on the theoretical analysis we determined the methods to use to conduct the research such as the questionnaire, the color metaphor method of I.L. Solomin, the "Career Anchor" by E.Shane.

The group of students took part in the program "My success", which, in fact, was a complex of developmental activities, including individual and group counseling, participation in psychological games.

After the ascertaining stage of the study, we obtained the following results. The most significant value (anchor) of a career is the stability of the place of work. Students have preferences for work which they would have for a long time which, did not require its replacement, which would not lead to stresses and fears of losing it that reflects the current state of economic and social instability of society. The next important value is self-devotion that means "working with people", "serving humanity", "helping people", "wanting to make the world better," etc. Students see their future careers in accordance with the mission of benefiting society, helping people, humanism, they do not plan to disregard their values in relation to other members of society, and if the place of work (organization) is opposed to these values, they will choose dismissal rather than compromise. The third important value for students is the integration of life styles that means orientation to a combination of different aspects of life (family, career, self-development). The young people seek for a balance between these spheres. Career in this case is only a means of self-expression in their lives, life as a whole is much more important, rather than a career in particular, a career is not separable from life in general, but is also not identical to it. The least preferred values which the students indicated in the questionnaires were the stability of the place of residence, that denotes the mobility of modern youth and professional competence, which can be associated with inexperience in finding work, career advancement and orientation to other opportunities in moving up the career ladder (purposefulness, efficiency, some impudence.

We got the following results after using the color metaphor method of I.L. Solomin. We compared the results of the methodology of the first and fourth year students in order to find significant differences between the concepts associated with a career. The results are reflected in Table 1.

Table 1
Age-related differences due to the color metaphor method of I.L. Solomin

The fourth -year course students are more optimistic about their future career in general than first-year course students. This is due to their overall greater personality and age maturity, the experience of communicating with professionals at master classes, practical teachers, getting acquainted with a special system of educational work aimed at training students as future competitive specialists, better adaptation in professional life. There are no significant differences in other notions.

There is no difference in their subjective attitude towards their future career among young men young women, but there are significant differences among young men and women with subjective reflection of the connection between career and creativity and career and interesting occupation. Career and creativity have the same emotional coloring among young women, which is associated with evaluating themselves in a career related to creativity or creative attitude to work. There are also differences among young men and young women in the relationship concerning career and success. Career is associated with success more among young women than young men.

Having analyzed the respond of the participants we got the following results.

1. Understanding of essence of career by the students of different courses. Students perceive career through values of material success (35%); values of power and influence (21%), personal growth as achievement of the goal, reaching a new level (14%); other respondents (30%) found it difficult to identify the leading values of their career.

2. Relation to the career of modern students. Participants view their future career through the prism of values such as personal growth, desire to achieve something in life, to overcome oneself (39%); to achieve material success, to raise their financial level, financial well-being (26%); gain authority (21%). The remaining 14% could not distinguish a leading attitude towards a career

3. Traits of character to build a successful career. Participants view such traits of character to build a successful career as purposefulness (26%); responsibility (18%), sociability, leadership, tact, teamwork (21%), professionalism (18%), the quality associated with education (intelligence, education, skills) (5%), a separate group can identify the negative qualities (arrogance, cynicism) (10%), quality activity, perseverance, willpower, agility (2%).

4. The role of career in a person's life. 65% of the participants are ready to risk for the sake of a career, and 35% of the participants are not ready to take risks. 26% of the participants are ready to choose a career at the expense of personal happiness, and 74% choose personal happiness.

5. Features of career mobility. Participants are ready in case loss of the job to seek job of his/specialty - 8%; to undertake any work - 33%; to obtain new profession - 23%; open one’s own business - 21%; to look for a temporary job; to look for well-paid job - 5%; to seek for a stable work - 10%; hope for a happy chance – 0%.

The program of psychological work on the problem of formation of career strategies included the following forms of work such as group counseling (which included informing on the issues of understanding the essence of career and career strategies, types of career strategies, qualities and abilities necessary for a successful career and career mobility); participation in the development in work of the program "My success"(which included awareness of one's own career strategies, the place of a career in the hierarchy of one's own values, typical behavior patterns in the situation of professional activity, the specifics of goal-setting); individual consultations for students on the formation of career strategies.

Summing up the results of the study, we tried to describe the characteristics of the career strategies of modern provincial youth in Russia. We concluded that modern youth in Russia understand the essence of the career and rely on such values as stability of work, humanism, integration of life styles (some harmonious balance). While building their own future career, they rely on the value of material success and personal growth. Participants see among the important qualities which are necessary for a successful career such qualities as responsibility, sociability. Career mobility is expressed as an ability to find a new job in case of its loss.

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1. Departments of Psychology, Volgograd State Academy of Physical Culture, Volgograd, Russia

2. Department of Economic Psychology and Labor Psychology, Institute of World Civilizations, Moscow, Russia. E-Mail: lyudmila.e.solyankina@gmail.com

3. Department of Economic Psychology and Labor Psychology, Institute of World Civilizations, Moscow, Russia