Career Anchors of Students with Talent in Technical Domains

Abstract

Romania is among the countries with the exodus of “gray matter” is very high. Increasingly, more graduates in engineering sciences choose other friendly countries for professional achievement. Among these, talented students in technical domains succeed becouse they are looking for their precious skills. The problem of brain drain could be solved by developing educational strategies to support talented young people in career development, based on the knowledge of their professional aspirations profile. This paper aims to identify occupational aspirations by identifying career anchors following Schein's theory. We start from the assumption that personal goals and values that led to a career choice significantly different from students with talent in the technical domain compared with those of students without outstanding performance. A number of 437 students on Technical University of Iasi participated in our investigation, among them a number of 66 students were identified as talented in technical domain (we used a grid of analysis obtained by intersecting subjects’ results in the instrument of self-nomination technical talent, with their academic results). The results of our investigation reveals that the axis values who determine students’ with technical talent career aspirations is shaped by four anchors: pure challenge, service/dedication for the cause, life style, creativity. The results are just starting point for investigations relating to specific professional development of young people with technical talent, young people that we want them motivated to have a career in country.