Career Interruptions

Career interruptions are breaks, pauses, or disruptions in one's current career. A career interruption occurs when an individual's typical and usual work is interrupted or changed by some internal (e.g., change in one's desired career path or life's goals) or external (e.g., job loss or disability) event. Alterations or changes in a person's career activities can change the course of one's work either temporarily or permanently. For example, a temporary career interruption may occur when a woman decides to leave the paid workforce to care for her children and reenters that same career at a later time. An example of a permanent interruption of one's career may occur in the face of an incurred disability or illness that makes it difficult or impossible to return to one's previous job. The world of work can be conceived of as a series of starts and stops, accelerations and waiting periods. With advances in technology and other global occupational and economic changes workers are increasingly being faced with expanding career options and the challenge of more frequent involuntary career interruptions. Research indicates that a career interruption or transition can be an opportunity for either growth or deterioration. An understanding of career interruptions is needed for counselors to effectively facilitate healthy adult functioning through all types of career transition processes.

There are various ways to categorize career interruptions. Career interruptions can be either anticipated or unanticipated, voluntary or involuntary. Anticipated interruptions are events that are expected to occur. [Page 116]Examples of anticipated career events are quitting a job, changing careers, or retirement. Unanticipated interruptions are those that one does not expect to happen, such as the loss of a job or an injury or illness that interferes with one's ability to continue in the same type of work or even engage in paid work at all. Career interruptions can also be classified as voluntary or involuntary. In a voluntary interruption, one chooses to interrupt the current course of one's career. An example of a voluntary career interruption is a person who chooses to exit the paid workforce to obtain a college or advanced degree. An example of an involuntary career interruption would be getting fired from one's job. It also is possible to have an anticipated career interruption that is involuntary and an unanticipated career interruption that is voluntary. For example, an individual may anticipate an impending layoff as a result of organizational downsizing. Similarly, an unanticipated voluntary career interruption can occur when a company is sold to another corporation that then offers continued employment, but under less than acceptable terms. In these circumstances, some people voluntarily choose to resign from their jobs, interrupting their careers in order to reassess their career and life goals. As a result, some people might choose to search for more desirable paid work; others may choose to use this opportunity to change careers completely; and others might decide to exit the paid workforce entirely to care for young children or elderly parents.

Although not all career interruptions are experienced as negative, there are a number of common issues faced by those experiencing breaks in their careers. For example, individuals might experience fear and anxiety as they establish a realistic appraisal of their currents skills and abilities, confront financial loss or instability, or experience the loss of job security, colleagues, identity, self-confidence, and self-esteem. Counselors attend to three sets of important factors when facilitating transitions through career interruptions: (1) the individual's perception of the interruption (e.g., voluntary versus involuntary, anticipated versus unanticipated); (2) the characteristics of preand postcareer interruption environments (e.g., financial, social, and health and ability status); and (3) internal resources (e.g., confidence and abilities) and adaptability. While attending to these factors, counselors can help people achieve adaptive transitions by facilitating the development of agency, optimism, clear and realistic planning, and perceived opportunity. Specifically, counselors can assist people in developing agency, or an internal motivation to take action to make adaptive changes. They can help people reframe the experience from one of loss to one of opportunity. Counselors also can assist clients in developing clear and detailed plans for achieving their goals. Finally, by encouraging the exploration of diverse alternatives, counselors can encourage individuals to expand the range of their perceived opportunities.

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