A Look at Donald Super’s Stages of Career Development in the 21st Century

By Marc Verhoeve

As we start this series of articles which revisit Donald Super’s career developmental stages in the light of the twenty-first century, I wish to share my snapshots of these stages, utilizing some professional hats that I have donned in the past twenty-five years.

Since 1975, I have been a secondary school counsellor in Ontario. As we peruse Super’s Growth [0-14] stage, we see an increasing demand on pre-adolescents to become very knowledgeable about self-concept and the workplace. This has evolved from the primary identification only of occupations that are portrayed with uniforms to exposure to a wider range of the 10,000 possible occupations with the use of computer-based, web-based and “bark-based” resources. As Brenda Melton, the president of the American School Counselors Association, stated at the American Counseling Association Conference in Anaheim, California in March 2003, there is a critical lack….and need….for elementary school counsellors because of the pivotal dimension of this first career developmental stage. The transition from elementary to secondary school assumes early job-cluster decision-making in order to choose the appropriate level of studies. It is true that there is flexibility early in secondary school, but this does not reduce the anxiety of parents “to make the right program/course choice”.

As we move into the Exploration stage, there is a somewhat antithetical dynamic. The career guidance curriculum, driven by the counsellors and teachers, encourages students to broaden their research to the full spectrum of possible occupations. But…..very quickly [ typically during their second year of secondary education], the students are then expected to focus their occupational search because of the fact that the courses now become “destination-driven”. Unfortunately, this search overshadows more detailed examination of the holistic dimension of Super’s definition of “Career” [job, family, hobbies, spirituality, physical fitness, community activities, and personal space]. Also, even though we tell students that they will have over 5 job-titles before their retirement [HRDC now is predicting 10 job-titles for the next job-generation], students …. and their parents…are determined to find the “perfect job”. As career practitioners, our biggest task is two-pronged:

1. to make certain that adolescents investigate the FULL range of available jobs. Research states that the average adolescent has a faint knowledge of 50 jobs [usually by exposure from TV, friends, neighbours and relatives], a good knowledge of a dozen jobs, and an excellent knowledge of five to six jobs. This is a far cry from the 10,000 available job titles….and the additional predicted one thousand new jobs in the next decade [If someone had asked you “What is a webmaster” in 1990, you have probably would have thought that it dealt with spiders].
2. to remind students to spread their interests and skills throughout their holistic career clusters; all one’s interests should not be focused only in one’s job. By also embedding some of these interests in the other sectors of one’s career, one becomes “fire-proof” with a less vulnerable identity that is not totally invested in one’s job-based identity.

My professional hat changes as we examine the transition from Exploration to the Establishment stage. I access clients at these stages as a Career Pathing Consultant [part-time private practice] and as a Cybertraining Consultant for Research Psychologists Press.

As a career pathing consultant, I have had the unique opportunity to interact with clients through the interpretation of the JVIS [Jackson Vocational Interest Inventory]. Since 1978, I have analyzed and interpreted over 2,000 profiles. This has provided me with career-histories and standardized data about persons in the full spectrum of occupational-paths.

It is remarkable to see the number of occupational paths that have been serendipity. There is the chiropractor who started in this field because of a dare. He and his University Science classmate saw a sign in a corridor stating “Chiropractic Entrance Exam”. They dared each other to write the exam; he passed, and now he is chiropractor for 10 years, but unsatisfied with his job and identity. There is the mother who is “school-nested” [Her children are all now in school during the day]. She personally excelled in secondary school, but was told by her parents in her graduating year that they did not have sufficient funds for her entry into university. She went to Secretarial School. Now, at the age of 35, she wants to pursue her occupational dreams.

As a cybertraining consultant, I have entered the web-based world of occupational research….the world of e-resumes, online career assessment [such as JVIS.com] and job-search engines such as Monster.com. The field of e-recruiting is a quantum jump from traditional job-search. Monster’s site contains over 1 million resumes. An e-recruiter can receive, in twenty-four hours, over 10,000 e-applications for a job posting. This, in turn, drives the use of keyword-search engines to distill the applicant-pool. Virtual Job Fairs are now becoming popular; in this format, the job-searcher is to stay online on a given day. An e-recruiter may then “beep” the applicant to initiate a live chat- based e-interview [This vehicle is also becoming web-cammed]. In this cyber-consultant role, I also have global-access to career practitioners. Even though we are sourced in a myriad number of cultures, I must say that, in my e-contact with professionals from Bangkok and Istanbul to Seoul and Auckland, we are more the same than we are different. We share the same career-decisional models and stresses, the same stereotypic mindsets about the career decisions by our clients.

In the Maintenance stage, there are dramatic shifts in the workplace because of globalization, downsizing, “rightsizing”, and mergers that have had a traumatic effect on these workers. I can recall a client who had been a production manager in an appliance-manufacturing firm for 25 years. At the age of 55, he was given a “golden handshake”. He still considered himself productive, but discovered that he has become a Career-Rip Vanwinkle when he revisited the workplace. The challenge for the career professional is to assist this client to redefine his transferable skill sets in the evolved workplace.

Super’s Decline stage is especially intriguing. As mentioned in the previous issue of the Contact Point Bulletin, just prior to his death in 1994, Super stated that “He did not consider himself as being in the decline stage of his model… He described himself, rather, as always innovating and one who wanted to be on the cutting edge of his specialty”. This stage is now identifiable with the Baby Boomers. According to the United Nations research, the percentage of the world population that is over 60 years of age has increased:

1950    8%
2000    10%
2050    21%

Based on this data, the U.N. states that, by 2050, “number of older persons in the world will exceed the number of young for the first time in history”! [World Population Ageing, 1950-2050, Population Division, DESA, United Nations, 2003.]

It takes little thought to realize the dramatic impact of this on the workplace… the predominance of the “mature worker” and the concomitant new occupations to service the needs of this population.

As I counsel these clients, I have the challenge of investigating with the client the range of options, from fulltime to part-time “portfolio workers” to searching vehicles that service the non-work dimensions of one’s career. I have defined this stage as “career renewal” because it allows the client to investigate a wider range of activities because they are, in many cases, not constrained by the financial bonds of a fulltime job. They become a “temporal millionaire” because they now fully own their time.

As we progress through this new millennium of our existence on this planet, we are compelled to redefine the terms, career, developmental stages and job. The paradigmal gears are shifting; are we career practitioners ready to lubricate these “gears of change” with our insights?

Marc Verhoeve has been a counsellor since 1975. In addition to being a secondary school Counselling Head, he is also a private career practitioner, as well as a cybertraining consultant. He is a Board Director for Contact Point and the Ontario School Counsellors Association(OSCA). In addition, he is the PAC Vice-Chair for Conestoga College’s Career Development Practitioner Program.

Are you interested in learning more about the Growth stage? Are there topics explored in a particular article that you would like to discuss further? Would you like to share your own ideas about this particular stage and how it impacts children and youth between the ages of 0-14? Come join us for this unique opportunity to chat with the authors of Super Series stage 1 and network with others working with this group.

• Wednesday June 4 (3:00pm – 4:00pm EST)