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As young individuals transition from educational settings to embark on their career paths, their expectations for their future careers become of paramount importance. Ng et al. (2010) examined the expectations of young people in post-secondary education in 2007; those colloquially referred to as “Millennials” or “GenY”. The present study replicates Ng et al.'s (2010) study among a sample of post-secondary students in 2019 (referred to as Generation Z or GenZ) and compares the expectations of young adults in GenY and GenZ.

This study employs a time-lag comparison of GenY and GenZ young career entrants based on data collected in 2007 (n = 23,413) and 2019 (n = 16,146).

Today's youth seem to have realistic expectations for their first jobs and the analyses suggest that young people continue to seek positive, healthy work environments which make room for work–life balance. Further, young people today are prioritizing job security and are not necessarily mobile due to preference, restlessness or disloyalty, but rather leave employers that are not meeting their current needs or expectations.

Understanding the career expectations of young people allows educators, employers and policymakers to provide vocational guidance that aligns those expectations with the realities of the labor market and the contemporary career context.

While GenY was characterized as optimistic with great expectations, GenZ can be described as cautious and pragmatic. The results suggest a shift away from opportunity, towards security, stability, an employer that reflects one's values and a job that is satisfying in the present.

This study investigates the relationship between “new career” profiles (Briscoe and Hall, 2006) and two sets of career factors: agency (i.e. career commitment, self-efficacy, and work locus of control), and career attitudes (i.e. salience and satisfaction). Thus, the purpose of this paper is to understand whether career profiles are a valuable way to understand careers in the modern career era, and if so, which profiles exist, and what differences exist across the profiles.

The participants in this study were 1,987 managers and professionals, recruited from a large database of potential respondents. Cluster analysis determined which profiles were apparent among the participants through a two-step clustering procedure using the Bayesian information criterion algorithm. The authors then compared the clusters using analysis of variance (ANOVA) with cluster membership as the independent variable and the career agency and attitude variables and age as the dependent variables.

Cluster analysis of the protean and boundaryless career attitudes of 1,987 respondents identified three career profiles: Trapped/Lost, Protean Career Architects, and Solid Citizens. ANOVA confirmed that people indicative of the three profiles differed significantly on all study variables. The findings suggest that the three different career profiles predict important differences in career variables and outcomes that are relevant to individual progression and growth needs and may be a valuable way to study contemporary careers. In particular, the person-centred approach acknowledges that the protean and boundaryless career concepts are related though distinct concepts that can be combined to show that individuals vary in the degree to which their career orientations are consistent with contemporary career constructs.

The authors have demonstrated that career profiles are a meaningful way to categorize career actors on the basis of their career orientation, as well as their scores on a host of important career variables. Although the study benefits from a large sample and a valid measure of career profiles, it does have some limitations. First, the authors relied on self-reported data gathered on a single survey questionnaire. Furthermore, because the study is cross-sectional, the authors cannot examine the long-term impact of career profile on outcomes such as career satisfaction or if career profiles are enduring or malleable over time.

From a practical perspective, it may be incumbent on organizations, career counsellors and individuals to develop an awareness to which career profile individuals belong (DeFillippi and Arthur, 1996). Doing so may offer insight into the likely challenges that career actors will face as their career unfolds, and ideally help individuals develop career management strategies to create career growth, rather than a more passive and reactive approach. A number of implications for each of the three career profiles are offered within the paper.

Utilizing a two-step clustering procedure, the authors provide empirical evidence of three of the 16 career profiles proposed by Briscoe and Hall (2006): Trapped/Lost, Protean Career Architects and Solid Citizens. Next, the authors explored the utility of the profiles for career development and demonstrated significant differences in career-related psychological factor and attitudes across profiles. Finally, the authors take a person-centric approach to career orientation, allowing for individual differences in career enactment. Overall, the results of this study show that career profiles are a highly useful composite that reflect important patterns relative to new career variables.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the gender gap in pre-career salary expectations. Five major explanations are tested to explain the gap, as well as understand the relative contribution of each explanation.

Data were collected from 452 post-secondary students from Canada.

Young women had lower initial and peak salary expectations than their male counterparts. The gap in peak salary could be explained by initial salary expectations, beta values, the interaction between beta values and gender, and estimations of the value of the labor market. Men and women in this study expected to earn a considerably larger peak salary than they expected for others.

Cross-sectional data cannot infer causality, and the Canadian sample may not be generalizable to other countries given that an economic downturn occurred at time of data collection. Research should continue to investigate how individuals establish initial salary expectations, while also testing more dynamic models given the interaction effect found in terms of gender and work values in explaining salary expectations.

The majority of the gender gap in peak salary expectations can be explained by what men and women expect to earn immediately after graduation. Further, women and men have different perceptions of the value they attribute to the labor market and what might be a fair wage, especially when considering beta work values.

The data suggests that the gender-wage gap is likely to continue and that both young men and women would benefit from greater education and information with respect to the labor market and what they can reasonably expect to earn, not just initially, but from a long-term perspective.

This study is the first to simultaneously investigate five theoretical explanations for the gender gap in pre-career expectations.