Initial Career and Work Meanings in Seven European Countries

The transition between school, training, and first full-time employment has become a complex one. Transition activities may include such diverse activities as additional general education, further vocational programs or stages, specific job training, military or civil service, part-time employment, temporary work, periods of unemployment, counseling, and periods of actively searching for work. In addition, frequent changes among these activities during the initial career (defined as the first 2.5 years of labor market exposure) are not exceptional.The individual's first job, the transitions, and initial career activities can have far-reaching effects on subsequent career development (Leibowitz, Schlossberg, & Shore, 1992) because they constitutesignificant part of the work socialization process. Work socialization refers to the interaction that occurs over time of work meanings and work environment that results in accommodation, matches or mismatches, and corresponding behaviors. Transitions and beginning career activities are important because they shape a person's initial work-role development through their impact on work meanings, work-related strategies, and behavior patterns. Work meanings developed during this period serve as an individual's framework for assessing and evaluating work-related experiences (Ruiz Quintanilla, 1991). This study explores and describes the initial careers of two target groups of young adults in seven European countries. On January 1, 1993, any citizen of the European Communities' member states was given the freedom to choose an education, a place to live, or a workplace in any of the communities' countries. Implementation of this measure is facilitated by studies like ours. To predict the impact of such a law, a better understanding of the current situation is needed. Some questions to pose include: What are the various educational ways (general education, vocational education, permanent education) used to prepare for labor market entry in the different European countries, and how frequently are they used (Coleman & Hendry, 1990)? Do career starters follow comparable routes in the different countries, or are the pathways country specific? This article also explores the relationship between initial career, work meaning development, and psychological well-being by analyzing how typical career patterns are related to differences in work meanings (MOW International Research Team, 1987). Of special interest here is the occurrence of unemployment periods during the beginning of a career, especially for those young adults who go directly from school into unemployment and, consequently, miss the experience of the psychological functions of working (Banks & Ullah, 1988; O'Brien, 1986; Warr, 1991). Career starters' activities are investigated beginning with the initial period of immediate preparation for a first full-time job and ending with the completion of their second year in the labor market. To study initial careers, a pattern approach is applied. Using a retrospective self-report procedure, young adults make a list of activities in which they have participated over a period of 2.5 years. The pattern approach emphasizes that transition and early career activities do not operate independently over the courage of time, but form a pattern. This means that while one activity increases another decreases, or while one activity is present another has to be absent. It also means that the order makes a difference. For example, the activities of unemployment, temporary employment, and full-time employment form different patterns if they progress from unemployment via temporary work to full-time employment as opposed to regressing from full-time employment through temporary employment to unemployment. Thus, initial career patterns are defined by the combination of single activities that young adults have experienced in the period before their first full-time and fully paid employment through their second year in the labor market. …