Scientific and Everyday Understanding of the Notion of Career

Career guidance has to be grounded on viable theories and concepts consistent with one's experiences to enable people (counsellors as well as clients) to make predictions about their career. Therefore, development of viable theories and concepts has to be a two-way process, including theoretical studies and investigation of individuals' experience in real life activities. The aim of the study was to get insight into scientific and everyday understanding of the notion of career. Several career theories and career concepts were briefly analysed. To find out the words and phrases people would use to define the notion of career, the empirical part of the research was provided. The participants were asked to define notions of career and successful career by completing sentences Career is. and Successful career is. Words, phrases and sentences were categorized into twelve categories: 'work', 'satisfaction', 'self-regulation', 'sequence', 'earnings', 'personal development', 'results', 'external evaluation', 'suitability', 'lifelong process', 'entrepreneurship', and 'interaction'. The categories which were used more often by the respondents to describe the notion of career were as follows: 'work', 'satisfaction', 'self-regulation', 'sequence', and ` earnings'. The participants used categories from 1 to 8 to describe their careers. Differences in the number of categories among the status subgroups are statistically significant; differences in the number of categories among the subgroups of gender are not statistically significant. Younger participants use more categories in their definitions of career and successful career.