Career Building by Bachelor’s Degree Holders (An Example of Qualitative Research)

Abstract

The objectives of the article are as follows: to determine the main categories of the bachelor’s life world related to career; the mechanisms for solving career problems and coping with difficulties; based on the collected material, try to reveal the ways of constructing a career as a whole. The research was carried out in the logic of qualitative methodology based on the phenomenological tradition and the concept of the life world of A. Schutz. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 43 people aged 23 to 25 years living in Krasnodar, who had completed their bachelor’s degree 1–2 years before the interview. The sample was formed in such a way that it included representatives of the main career options after completing a bachelor’s degree; the sample included men and women, representatives of natural science and socio-­humanitarian specialties. The concepts and techniques of grounded theory were used in sampling and data analysis. The categories of the graduates’ life world are identified, revealing their attitude to the specialty and earnings, training in the master’s program, options for internal position (passion for the profession, labour market pragmatism, expectation, personal development), mechanisms for solving career problems (relying on the experience of project activity during education; interdisciplinary competence, the ability to discover in their hobbies, interests, desires such aspects that are match the new life circumstances; mobilization of internal and external resources; synergistic goal-setting; continuity and expansion of plans; orientation to large-­scale goals), ways of temporal career organization (evolution, “snowball”, projecting). The clarity of awareness and the different combinations of the identified categories determine the individual career. Prospects for further research: assessment of the status and subjective performance of a graduate’s career, depending on the content of the identified psychological components; development of vocational guidance programs.