What Happened to Your Calling? The Development of Calling Across College-To-Work Transition

Abstract

Career calling is a pervasive, purposeful, transcendent, and passion-driven approach to a job that is perceived as central to individuals’ identity, that contributes to the greater good, and for which individuals are willing to make sacrifices. Research on the dynamics of career calling has grown exponentially, but clarity on whether and how a career calling changes during key life transitions is still lacking. In this article, we report the results of a two-wave study in which changes in perceiving a calling, living out a calling, and calling motivation were compared across groups of college students ( n = 781), college-to-work transitioners ( n = 143), and workers ( n = 270). The results show that perceiving a calling is stable for students, decreases during college-to-work transitions, and slightly increases for workers; living out a calling is stable for students, decreases during college-to-work transitions, and slightly decreases for workers; motivation to pursue a calling is stable in all groups and higher for students entering the job market. Workers have lower levels of perceiving and living out a calling than students.