The Development Of Professional Life

During the development of our professional life, we meet friends and enemies, acquire a sense of competence, fulfill a series of goals, learn from our mistakes and reach our goals. Our profession is an important part of our identity and our social context. Having a job is having a livelihood and, of course, a salary to support yourself. However, a professional career is much more than that.

Professional life will be very different depending on the stage of life we ​​are in, as depending on that, our vision of work will be one way or another. In this article, we will talk about the conclusions derived from studies and research on the development of professional life.

Thus, we can say that there are 3 phases or important moments related to our professional life: the search for work, its realization and possession, and subsequent retirement.

The stages of professional life development

The search for a job

One of the main goals of young adults is to find a job that allows them to be productive and have sufficient resources to achieve autonomy. This last objective is considered one of the reasons why young people choose the positions that are better paid. On the other hand, the elderly who already have guaranteed autonomy will have job satisfaction as their main objective.

Keep in mind that there are many factors that influence the path and effectiveness of your job search. One of the most important is the family of origin of the young job seeker. For example, the family can influence directly by using their social support network to help get their children a job, or by maintaining a certain role or employment status.

However, the family can also indirectly influence the search for work,  facilitating the possibility of accessing adequate training or promoting certain attitudes or behaviors.

On the other hand, a central aspect in the search for work is social status. Research shows that families often transmit their social status to their children and influence their working life. Thus, working families, who at work must show obedience to authority, often see their children’s obedience as a positive attitude. This can carry the danger of being stuck in the same social or economic life as the parents if taken to extremes.

life with a job

Once they get a job , the individual’s goals or goals are to keep it in the job or get a higher quality position. It is important to keep in mind that today’s working life is much more dynamic than in the past, so young people are more motivated to change jobs.

There are two central aspects in job evaluation that will determine its maintenance: remuneration and quality of work. Salary represents the extrinsic motivation of work. Although at the beginning it has great importance, it will be placed in second place according to the development of professional life.

On the other hand, the quality of work would be the intrinsic motivational factor, which will determine the degree of satisfaction. After all, the ultimate goal of employment is to fulfill the aspirations of productivity and quality of life, and this is usually more related to the quality of work than to remuneration.

Retirement: the end of professional life

All stages come to an end, and retirement represents the end of professional life. We must keep in mind that retirement does not have to be a sharp cut from working life, but rather a transition. It is a stage that each person will live in a certain way, according to their professional development and their aspirations.

Thus, we can say that there are 3 different ways to take a retirement:

• Honeymoon: it is the case of those individuals who start to carry out all the activities they wanted to do, but their professional life did not allow it. They now have time to travel, study, discover hobbies, etc. They are usually people who retire voluntarily and happily, and have enough financial resources to enjoy this “honeymoon”.
• Rest and relaxation: In this case, the adult assumes retirement to rest from the obligations he had to bear during his active life.

• Continuity: These are people who continue to carry out activities related to their professional life after retirement. Here we find those individuals who were satisfied with their work and wanted to continue with it, discarding old professional obligations.

As we can see, retirement is the end of working life, but it is not the end of life. Although for many people it is a crisis due to the loss of productivity and activity, it is a stage in life with new challenges, behaviors and goals.