Factors Influencing Career-Shift

Results

Content analysis revealed that three major factors influence the career-shift process: individual factors, social factors and relational factors. Individual factors were further divided into mid-level categories: individual values, personality, motivation, health issues, vision, and introspection process. Social factors were also broken down into mid-level categories that are support from others, social values and occupational experiences. The only subcategory under relational factors is the person-occupation incongruence. Mid-level categories under individual and social factors revealed subcategories, too. There is no third level sub-category under relational factors (See Table 2). These individual, social and relational categories

Whether the culture in which the person belongs to is tight or loose plays an important role in the decision to career-shift. One can expect that it is easier to change occupations in loose cultures than tight cultures because social norms allow the individual to do whatever he or she wants to do. People who are raised in loose cultures are also expected to be more liberal compared to those in tight cultures. According to Gelfand et. al. (2011) Turkey has a moderately tight culture. Interviewees reported that people who are close to them had difficulties understanding and supporting their decisions to change their occupations. Occupational Experiences Individuals’ unpleasant experiences in previous occupations can cause them to dislike their occupations because they can associate these bad experiences with the occupation. Additionally, internships the individuals had during preparing for the particular occupation can show the dark side of the occupation that resulted in losing their interest for the occupation. Some respondents comment:

“I decided that I did not want to be a mechanical engineer during the internship I did in my junior

I saw that upper level employees were not chemists. I wanted to be an upper level employee, too. I decided to study industrial engineering. My mind changed completely after the summer when I did my internship.”

Relational Factors.

The only relational factor was found to be person-job incongruence. When the personality of the interviewee and the personality that the occupation requires does not match, interviewees reported that they considered to leaving the occupation.

Additionally, all of the interviewees reported that career-shifting process was costly to them emotionally, financially or both. Interestingly, thirteen of the participants reported that they felt better after the interview without being asked because the interview served them as therapy.

Additionally, how prestigious each occupation is viewed by others (status scores) of the occupations were compared before and after the career-shift. Mean and standard deviations of the status scores given to each occupation were calculated. A paired samples t-test was conducted to compare the status scores of old occupations and new occupations of the interviewees. Interviewees were found to lose status as they changed their occupations (t(24)=1.06,