Early Career Experiences Research Articles

Analyzing the Impact of Academic and Financial Factors on the Employment Prosperity of Engineering Graduates: A Case Study from Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta

The rapid technological advancements and evolving job markets present a pressing need to understand how academic experiences shape the career outcomes of engineering graduates. This understanding is crucial for educational institutions aiming to align their curricula with industry demands and for graduates seeking to maximize their career prospects. Notably, the role of financial support, academic performance, and early career experiences in influencing graduate prosperity remains underexplored. This study aims to analyze the correlation between finance support, GPA, study period, job waiting times, salary details, and the prosperity of graduates from the Faculty of Engineering at Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta. The prosperity of graduates is defined as earning wages equal to or exceeding the Indonesian minimum average wage. Using data from a tracer study questionnaire, the research employed logistic regression and correlation analysis to investigate these relationships. The data underwent several stages of filtering, resulting in a refined dataset of 70 records for analysis. This study used SPSS software for statistical analysis, focusing on descriptive statistics, correlation, and logistic regression models. The results highlighted significant predictors of graduate prosperity, including GPA and types of financial support, while illustrating the limited predictive power of early career experiences on long-term earnings. The study also indicated that extended study periods do not necessarily correlate with higher wages. In conclusion, the study underscores the importance of targeted educational strategies and student support systems that are responsive to the dynamics of the job market, enhancing the readiness and prosperity of engineering graduates.

Enabling and constraining ‘vulnerability ready’ teachers in mentee–mentor relations

ABSTRACT Becoming a teacher is complex and relies on productive relations forged in practicum contexts that support expressions of uncertainty. Supportive mentor–mentee practices are integral to enabling relationships that can nurture expressions of vulnerability in workplace learning. However, workplace conditions are affected by the sociocultural arrangements that shape how relationships are enabled and constrained, affecting how preservice teachers (PST) perceive and respond to expressions of vulnerability. The added requirement of a teacher performance assessment to endorse PSTs to the profession adds another layer of complexity to expressions of uncertainty. When performative demands are framed within social conditions, educators can feel powerless to act agentically in response to these demands and be less likely to express their vulnerabilities. Drawing on the theory of practice architectures and adopting a comparative case study methodology, two cases of learning teaching in open-plan learning classrooms are examined. Expressions of vulnerability are grounded in the stories of PSTs’ practicum relations they build with mentors to legitimise their readiness for classrooms. Conditions that enabled dialogue, interactions and collaboration support an openness to expressions of vulnerability in early career experiences, shaping resilience as vulnerability-ready agency as teachers. However, findings also highlight constraining elements of practicum learning that limit PSTs’ transformation and may be supported by a thinking-feeling praxis.

Mid-career outcomes of doctoral graduates from German universities explained through triadic thought

ABSTRACT This article critically examines the early career experiences and mid-career outcomes of domestic and international doctoral graduates from public German universities in the social sciences and humanities over two decades. We develop triadic thought as a spatial theory to conceptualise professional careers as situated coproductions in the complex interplay of career considerations, career praxis, and career environments. Drawing on qualitative interviews and the analysis of mid-career outcomes, our theoretically informed findings identify three formative influences on career decisions: first, the discursive normalisation of an academic career; second, the practical normalisation of shifting career goals; and third, the material normalisation of a public sector habitus. To mitigate the reinforcement of a congested academic labour market and striking tensions between individual career challenges and systemic benefits of temporary jobs for institutional and national productivity, we encourage a Bologna-style reform to create compatible academic career structures within Europe.

Differential and resonant solidarities: A materialist approach to the early career experience

Navigating academia as early career academics (ECAs) is increasingly challenging, with many facing structural inequities, the rise of precarious work, and the increased marketisation of higher education in the United Kingdom and beyond. The purpose of this article is to provide a platform for learnings and insights gleaned from our experiences as five ECAs who worked together to lead the ‘early career network’ for a learned association between 2021 and 2023. In the article, we explore some of the challenges, opportunities, and call for actions that come out of our own encounters with the neoliberal higher education landscape as both students and workers in the social sciences. We propose a dual conceptualisation of solidarity as both resonant and differential, and mobilise this theoretical contribution to reflect on themes of community, materiality, care, knowledge, and labour as key strands which shape the interface between ECAs and complex higher education ecologies. Theoretically and practically, we aim to facilitate solidarity in early career communities, mobilising ‘ECA’ as more than a purely temporal category. Finally, we make recommendations to colleagues across the discipline for forging and nourishing collaborative, healthy, and inclusive environments in which ECAs can thrive.

The effect of corporate executives’ academic experience on firm financialization — Evidence from listed manufacturing firms in China

This paper studies the impact of corporate executives’ early academic experience on corporate financialization using the data from 2010 to 2019 of A-share listed manufacturing firms on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. The results show that the personal characteristics developed in early academic career experience significantly inhibit their decision-making on corporate financialization. This inhibitory effect is more obvious among the non-state-owned firms and those firms in the regions with a high level of marketization. Meanwhile, this inhibitory effect enhances with the implementation of equity incentive policies for corporate executives, but not with the employee stock ownership plan (ESOPs). The results reveal the value of early academic career experiences of executives in corporate governance.

Challenges and opportunities for early career researchers: using the theory of practice architectures to unpack enabling and constraining conditions

ABSTRACT Globally, there are growing examinations of what it means to be ‘early career’ in contemporary academia. Across international contexts, the experiences of early career researchers appear to be similar. This paper explores the similarities and differences of the Australian early career experience, through the lens of pathways to the academy and career stage. We use the autoethnographic reflections of two early career researchers, one following the ‘traditional’ pipeline to the academy and the other as a ‘second career’ academic. We use the theory of practice architectures to frame the study and to generate and analyse our reflections: we identify the enabling and constraining conditions and how these differ depending on previous life and professional experiences. The autoethnographic reflections illuminate how practices are shaped by the organisational arrangements within the site of the institution. This study makes a theoretical contribution by using the theory of practice architectures to illuminate early career researcher experiences. By using a practice theory, our analysis and insight provide guidance for institutional policy, professional learning, and development strategies for early career researchers.

The First Small Firm Effect: Early Career Experience and Employees’ Transition to Entrepreneurship

The First Small Firm Effect: Early Career Experience and Employees’ Transition to Entrepreneurship

How students learn to lead in pre- and early-career experiences.

This study illuminates the leadership experiences of undergraduate business students undertaking a 1-year work placement. Semi-structured interviews and reflective journals were used to explore the students' leadership experiences before and during their placement. Through reflection on these experiences, students were able to make sense of their own leadership learning as well as develop their leadership identity. A main contribution of this study has been the formulation of a theoretical model that fully acknowledges prior lived experience, and the multi-layered and complex process of leadership identity development.

Critical Reflections on Universities, Publishing, and the Early Career Experience

This paper is a critical reflection on the changing relationship between university institutions, academic publishing, and young researchers. It emerges from a current project in assessing the role and development of Warwick University’s research journals (and their editors), but also takes into account two recent Warwick Institute of Advanced Study seminars discussing the practical and strategic challenge of publishing for early career scholars and PhD students. While these seminars concerned publishing in general, and the question of career trajectories, this reflection paper takes into account the current shifts in publishing and our understanding of research as knowledge production more broadly. This reflection maintains that, in part provoked by digital media, the status of research knowledge vis-à-vis its traditional presentation in the discrete products of the ‘article’, and the book, has become unstable, and this instability has opened up a range of economic and systemic conditions of knowledge production that have long since been concealed. Current shifts thus offer younger scholars and early career researchers significant opportunities: this short paper sets out the initial framework for a current research project focussing on university publishing, then it refers to the two above seminars in order to conclude with some critical issues for academic practice, research and for early career scholars. Exchanges Discourse Podcast Being an Effective Academic Citizen in the Republic of Knowledge: In Conversation with Jonathan Vickery [59:58]

Experiences of female early-career professionals in male-dominated STEM companies in Kazakhstan

ABSTRACT After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan put forward elaborate initiatives to address gender segregation in the labour market. However, female professionals are still heavily underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Considering conflicting cultural influences on the role of women in the country and guided by the social cognitive theory, the present study explores the early career experiences of female professionals working in STEM companies in Kazakhstan. The thematic analysis of 24 semi-structured interviews with early-career female professionals showed that social structural challenges with recruitment and promotion, organization integration and work-life balance prevent women from building successful careers in STEM. It was also found that to counterbalance these challenges, female professionals develop a variety of coping strategies such as projecting a professional image and adopting a masculine interaction style, conforming to the existing status quo and challenging gender discrimination and stigmatization. Drawing from the social cognitive theory, this study revealed that conflicting gender role expectations based on traditional, Western and Soviet cultural values might disempower and undermine women’s agency in transitioning to employment in STEM.

Generic or subject-specific? A survey comparing Dutch secondary school visual art teachers’ early-career experiences to teacher experiences in non-arts subjects

ABSTRACT This study compared visual art teachers’ experiences of generic early-career professional identity dilemmas with experiences of dilemmas arising from subject-specific concerns. In turn, their experience of generic dilemmas was compared with experiences of non-arts teachers, as found in literature. Results show, on average, art teachers experienced considerably more dilemmas than non-arts teachers. No conclusive evidence was found for more frequent, or stronger experience of arts-specific dilemmas. Our data does, however, concur with descriptions of art teacher identity dilemmas found in qualitative arts education research, suggesting that some generic early-career dilemmas may become conflated with subject-specific concerns. For example, art teachers may focus more on students expressing their emotions than other teachers. In uncovering how these teachers might use subject-specific framing when interpreting generic dilemmas, this research invites teacher educators to consider how the subject one teaches may have deeper, and more complex connections to early-career dilemma experiences than previously recognised.

Maintaining the gap: women’s early career experiences of entry into the UK graduate labour market

ABSTRACT Gender inequality in the workplace remains a persistent issue that impacts upon women from their first point of entry into the labour market. In this paper, we explore the experiences, of 20 women in the UK as they take their initial steps onto the career ladder upon graduation. Adopting an interpretive methodology that uses a Bourdieusian framework based on habitus, capital, and field, we highlight that women continue to face structural and individual barriers that influence, and in many cases limit, available career opportunities. By intersecting gender with social class and ethnicity, intra-gender differences are identified that demonstrate the deep-seated nature of disadvantage faced by working class and ethnic minority female graduates in securing employment in comparison to their white, middle-class peers. We conclude by recommending that careers support and guidance should be introduced earlier in the education system to raise aspirations and challenge the perpetuation of gender inequality.

Moments that Matter: Early-Career Experiences of Diverse Engineers on Different Career Pathways

ABSTRACT While many early-career engineers in the United States leave the field of engineering in the first few years of their careers, we know little of their early professional experiences and reasoning for career plans. We conducted 33 semi-structured interviews with early-career engineers, comparing the experiences of engineers across intersections of gender and race. In particular, we examine meaningful early-career experiences and how these connect to the innate needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, as well as career intentions. Top moments on the job were often first-time experiences and milestones that enhanced the engineers’ sense of competence. Meaningful moments connected to relatedness were more often positive than negative experiences for White men, whereas experiences undermining relatedness were more common for people of color and/or women. Connections to autonomy emerged more in bottom moments, especially for White engineers. Across different intended career pathways, early-career engineers often evaluated their experiences regarding their ability to work effectively and through social validation from peers and managers (or undermined by a lack thereof). The results indicate the need for a greater understanding of early-career affordances in supporting entry and retention in the engineering workforce by promoting individual effectiveness and social validation.

Forged at Workforce Entry? CEO Imprinting, Information Uncertainty and Merger Wave Timing

AbstractWe examine the imprinting effect of labour market conditions on a CEO's merger wave timing decisions. Based on a sample of 720 CEOs of US‐based firms in merger waves between 1995 and 2018, we found that CEOs who started their careers during periods of poor labour market conditions tend to delay merger wave entry, while those who began under better conditions act earlier. We also found that the market uncertainty at the beginning of the merger wave decays this effect on CEOs whose workforce entry coincided with poor labour market conditions. This study contributes to the M&A literature by highlighting the long‐term impact of early career experiences on CEO merger wave timing decisions and how those preferences may decay when faced with different conditions later in their careers.

Early career experience of executives and stock price informativeness

This paper examines the impact of early career experience through economic recessions of executives on stock price informativeness. We find that firms with a greater percentage of executives who start their careers during recessionary periods are positively associated with stock price informativeness, as measured by firm-specific stock return variation. Moreover, we document that the association is more pronounced for firms with poor external monitoring. These findings indicate that the early career experiences of executives significantly affect the extent to which stock prices convey firm-specific information, and that external monitoring and executives’ experiences during economic downturns exhibit a substitutive relationship. This paper points out the importance of considering the heterogeneous characteristic of executives to better understand corporate transparency.

CEO experience, managerial overconfidence and investment efficiency: Evidence from a natural experiment in China

We examine how the early lives and career experiences of CEOs impact corporate investment efficiency in the Chinese economy. We identify two extraordinary events that are likely to underlie CEOs' formative experiences: the economic reforms that commenced in 1978 and CEOs' prior career experiences. We show that CEOs who experienced the economic reforms and opening-up in their early adult lives tend to be more confident and overinvest more than those who grew up during the planned economy era. Furthermore, CEOs whose entire careers have been in the business sector exhibit greater levels of confidence and overinvestment than those with long-term public administration experience prior to their service as corporate executives.

Common Interests Without Common Expertise: Reflections on Early-career Experiences in Cross-Disciplinary Research.

Cross-disciplinary research enables us to tackle complex problems that require expertise from different fields. Such collaborations involve researchers who have different perspectives, communication styles, and knowledge bases, and can produce results far greater than the sum of their parts. However, in an era of increasing scientific specialization, there exist many barriers for students and early-career researchers (ECRs) interested in training and undertaking interdisciplinary research endeavors. This perspective examines the challenges that students and ECRs perceive and experience in cross-disciplinary work and proposes pathways to create more inclusive and welcoming research environments. This work emerges from a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded workshop held during the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) Annual Meeting in January 2023 in Austin, TX. The workshop brought together seasoned interdisciplinary scientists with undergraduate and graduate students to identify and discuss perceived challenges through small group discussions and experience sharing. Through summarizing a range of student concerns about embarking on careers as interdisciplinary scientists and identifying ways to dismantle institutional and lab management-level barriers, we aim to promote an inclusive and collaborative problem-solving environment for scientists of all experience levels.

What Generation Z needs: the role of project-based organizations in creating career sustainability

PurposeAs the youngest generation – Generation Z (Gen Z) – enters the workplace, there is a growing interest in this cohort's career needs and expectations. This paper explores the under-researched topic of Gen Z project management (Gen Z PM) professionals. In addition to shedding light on the factors that positively affect Gen Z PM professionals' early career-development phase, this research aims to identify specific organization-led practices that can foster sustainable early PM careers and so achieve greater workforce sustainability.Design/methodology/approachThrough the lens of the resource-based view (RBV), Gen Z PM professionals are considered critical resources that can help ensure workforce sustainability in project-based organizations (PBOs). Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 25 Gen Z PM professionals in Australia to explore the professionals' early career experiences and the organizational-support initiatives that facilitate positive experiences. The results were analyzed using thematic analysis.FindingsThe results revealed that most Gen Z PMs experienced many challenges and a lack of support during their early career phase: Gen Z value (1) mentoring, (2) time for training and development, (3) showing support and guidance, (4) understand skill-gaps and (5) reasonable workloads. Through catering to these needs, PBOs can ensure better career sustainability for their young Gen Z talent and, therefore, greater workforce sustainability for the project profession.Originality/valueAccording to the career sustainability lens, PBOs play a significant role in ensuring that their valuable young PM talent are supported and retained in the profession. This research sheds light on what Gen Z PM professionals value in their early careers, which guided recommendations to better support this new generation of project professionals.

(1130) Training and Early Career Experience in Pediatric Heart Failure and Transplantation

(1130) Training and Early Career Experience in Pediatric Heart Failure and Transplantation

Early Career Experiences of Cardiothoracic Surgery Graduates by Training Model: A National Survey

BackgroundAs the practice of cardiothoracic surgery continues to evolve, the optimal training model represents an area of uncertainty. We sought to describe and to compare the early career experiences of cardiothoracic surgery graduates from the 3 training models. MethodsAn anonymous survey with questions pertaining to an individual's demographic characteristics, training model, first employment experience, experience as junior faculty, career satisfaction, and personal reflection was sent to graduates from US cardiothoracic surgery training programs between 2012 and 2020. Respondents completed a traditional fellowship (2-3 years), a 4+3 model, or an integrated 6-year (I-6) residency. ResultsOf the 670 graduates who received the survey, there were 267 (40%) respondents. Of these, 209 (78%) respondents graduated from a traditional fellowship, 27 (10%) respondents graduated from a 4+3 pathway, and 31 (12%) respondents graduated from an I-6 residency. There was no difference in overall satisfaction, major case volume, operative autonomy, burnout, and lifestyle satisfaction between the models (P>.05). When respondents were asked about the ideal model, the 4+3 and I-6 models were favored by its graduates, regardless of the surgeons’ field of practice. ConclusionsImportant early career outcomes were not different between graduates of traditional, 4+3, or I-6 models. Most graduates of the 4+3 and I-6 models believe these are the ideal training models, regardless of their field of practice.