Notion of a life long career is now a thing of the past

Programming at APA?s Annual Convention will focus on today?s new work patterns.

By Bridget Murray
Monitor staff

The psychologist who spends a lifetime seeing patients in the same practice is no longer the norm. Neither is the psychology professor who settles on a university after graduate school and stays there through retirement.

More than ever before, psychologists are working part time, juggling several job roles and consulting for different organizations. 'The standard, narrow notion of starting at entry level and building your status, rung by rung, is no longer typical,' says psychology professor Fred Leong, PhD, of Ohio State University. 'The notion of career is shifting to mean many different forms of work life.'

The death of old career paths challenges psychologists to think creatively about new ones, says Leong. But the upheaval also threatens their economic security, spawning considerable angst and anxiety, he says.

Psychologists? concern over the phenomenon has prompted Leong to chair the panel, 'Death of the career: new and emerging models of employment,' part of a larger symposium on the evolving career world at APA?s Annual Convention, Aug. 14?18, in San Francisco.

The first session sets the stage for what?s happening in the marketplace. Other sessions in the symposium offer psychologists strategies for handling the new career world?how to compete and market yourself at early and mid-career, for example. Monitor articles in the June and July issues will explore some of those strategies.

Turbulence

What?s causing these changes in the workplace? According to Leong they spring from cost-cutting in the private and public sectors, a rise in self-employment and more competition for jobs brought on by increasing numbers of women and minorities in the workplace.

In higher education, to meet greater demands for education and training among a broader population of students, universities are hiring more part-time faculty while tenure-track positions remain stable or decline. In fact, the number of faculty working part time in higher education doubled between 1970 and 1995, from 22 to 41 percent, according to a March report from the U.S. Department of Education.

Psychologists in every work setting are seeing a rising demand for applied research, technical skills and advanced education along with diminishing job security and full-time work, says labor economist Barbara Wiens-Tuers, a doctoral candidate at the University of California?Riverside who teaches at California State University?San Bernardino and will speak on the convention panel.

Luckily, most psychologists are well armed with research and technical skills, but many are anxious about the downturn in job security and standard employment, the convention panelists say.

Angst for psychologists

The changes in the job market have distressed some psychologists because they no longer can feel secure about a life-long career and people are more burdened with mapping their own future, the panelists say. In addition, employees have less bargaining power and less 'voice' in the work world, says Wiens-Tuers.

Also daunting is a lack of societal support for changing and finding jobs, says psychologist Catherine Gaddy, PhD, who directs the Commission of Professionals in Science and Technology in Washington, D.C., and is slated as a discussant on the convention panel.

'The issues of job security and employer loyalty are on the table, but at the same time society isn?t set up logistically and economically to help people change jobs,' says Gaddy. 'People with mortgages to pay and children to educate don?t respond well to the turbulence.'

Acquiring new skills, searching for jobs and changing health, retirement and insurance plans add stress to the situation, she says. In addition, many psychologists are leery of managed care?s limits on their practices, and they worry that some forms of part-time work are exploitative.

One such worrisome form is 'contingent employment,' says Kathleen Barker, PhD, a psychology professor at Pace University in New York City and another slated panelist. Through contingent employment, the employee works temporarily for considerably lower compensation than full-time employees, and thus far the psychologists it affects are mostly academicians.

Barker has researched the rise in contingent work in academe, and her results indicate that faculty employed contingently for more than five years suffer on the academic job market. Their underemployment hurts their self-confidence, says Barker.

'One of the most important aspects of mental health is control and predictability, so when your attachment to your employer is tenuous, you get negative repercussions,' says Barker.

Dangerous opportunity

Leong advises against resignedly accepting contingent work and other unjust employment, but he also believes that progress can emerge from the angst and upheaval. Psychologists can turn the changes to their advantage, he says.

'There is danger in some of the marketplace changes. But it is also an opportunity for us to break out of the mold of the clinical psychologist and the career academic. It?s a chance for creative thinking and planning, of applying your skills in ways that interest you.'

People who employ themselves can handle their own finances and choose their own fulfilling paths, instead of letting someone else choose for them, says Leong. Many psychologists are already approaching their careers more flexibly, says Leong. Roughly 20 percent of psychologists are self-employed, according to APA?s Research Office, and more of them are consulting with the private sector than ever before.

People are learning to take charge of their careers?managing their own finances, running workshops and starting group businesses, says Leong. Of course, crafting such a self-made career is no simple task, he says. Adapting to the new world of careers requires such strategies as marketing yourself, packaging your skills and dealing with increasing marketplace competition?all fodder for the second and third sessions of the symposium and for related Monitor articles on career strategizing in the June and July issues.

For further reading on careers consult the book 'The Career Is Dead?Long Live the Career: A Relational Approach to Careers' (Jossey-Bass, 1996) by psychologist Douglas T. Hall, PhD.