Thseen Nazir
Ayşe Özçiçek- Department of Guidance and Psychological Counseling, Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul, Turkey
Career sailboat model (CSM) is a postmodernist career-counseling model in which career decision-making involves four interrelated and interactive dimensions: individual/personal factors, social factors, system-related factors, and chance factors. According to the CSM, because these factors are interrelated, in case of disclusion of any of them while making a career decision may lead an individual to make unfitting career choices. From this perspective, an unexpected event such as a natural disaster can be considered under the category of chance factor and it can impact other factors -individual, social and system-related- which have an influence on the individual’s career choice as well as its impact varies according to the individual, social and system-related factors. This article aims to understand the effects of COVID-19, as a chance factor, on other constructs -individual/personal, social, and system-related- of the CSM and their overall impacts on people’s career decision-making process. To be able to understand the impact of such a global calamity, the research done during the COVID-19 period has been used in this research. It is concluded that when a calamity like COVID-19 comes into the scene as a chance factor can have a significant impact on an individual’s perspective regarding their career.
Introduction
Globalization is an ever-evolving process and rapid transformations in information technologies drive the present age to witness enormous changes in almost every field of human life (Watts, 1996). The economy and the job market are also getting their transformational share from this change. More explicitly, changes in the economy have a reciprocal relationship with the changes in career choices, job market, work content, the values of society regarding jobs, and goals and meanings attached to work (Maree, 2010). That is why there is an immediate urgency for career counseling to speed up with these changes and evolve accordingly to fulfill the latest demands, requirements, or expectations (Watson, 2004; Savickas, 2006; Kriwas, 2013). When we consider the constant and rapid transformations in the approaches of career counseling, it is seen that there is a gradual shift from emphasizing the interests of individuals for supply–demand in the job market; to helping individuals for flexibility and gaining skills to adjust to fast-changing work environments and different types of jobs. In other words, today’s world requires individuals to demonstrate flexibility and mobility in their career course rather than stability (Savickas, 2012).
Person-environment fit theories such as Theory of Vocational Personalities and Work Environment (Holland, 1959) and Theory of Work Adjustment (Dawis and Lofquist, 1984; Dawis, 2005) and process-focused developmental theories such as Super (1980) can be considered as traditional career counseling models concerning the instrument that they used. Traditional career counseling theories contain quantitative methods for finding a proper job for the counselee or enhancing their career development. In other words, psychological tests were extensively used in traditional methods (Maree, 2010). However, in the postmodern era, the new approaches are derived from the interpretive paradigm (Savickas, 2005) and are more relative to qualitative methods. According to postmodernism, there is no absolute truth; instead, every individual creates their own reality. This view leads counselors to guide their counsel to construct their own stories and careers by identifying their vocational behavior and experiences in the workplace (Savickas, 2005). It can be concluded that in today’s world, assessments based on test results alone are not enough to understand the suitable career for individuals.
Postmodernist approaches to career counseling mainly carry a constructivist view which means they combine various widely used career theories, give importance to contextual features, and guide individuals to construct the self and the meaning (Young and Collin, 2004; Korkut-Owen and Niles, 2020). Career Sailboat Model (2015) developed by Fidan Korkut-Owen and her colleagues is one of the postmodern theories of career counseling and is consistent with the constructivist view. In this article, we try to examine the components of the Career Sailboat Model by using examples of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Career sailboat model
As a postmodernist career development theory, the Career Sailboat Model is in line with constructivism. It supports Patton (2005) claim that career decision-making cannot depend on a single moment; it is an ongoing process that individuals construct throughout their lives. Career Sailboat Model “focuses on the determination of career goals and decision-making following self-discovery and possible opportunities” for the counselee (Korkut-Owen et al., 2015b, p. 7).
In career counseling, metaphors have a significant prospect of filling the gap between theory and practice (Amundson, 2003), and in Career Sailboat Model, a sailboat metaphor is used to make the counselees visualize their career choice process (Figure 1 is the visual representation of the model). A journey with a sailboat requires a hull, a mainsail, a foresail, wind, and waves. In this model, every necessity of the voyage represents various factors in an individual’s life that affect their career path. More specifically, the hull represents the individual/personal factors; the mainsail symbolizes the social factors; the foresail depicts the system-related factors, and finally, wind and waves illustrate the chance factor.
Figure 1. Career sailboat model (Korkut-Owen et al., 2010).
These factors can be defined as the following:
•Personal/Individual Factors: The condition of the hull is essential for engaging in a successful voyage. In the same manner, carefully examining the counselee’s interests, abilities, academic achievements, personality, physical/health conditions, aptitudes, skills, values, goals, expectations, perception of the ideal job, and other factors associated with individuals themselves is crucial for one’s career course.
•Social Factors: The mainsail is the principal sail that makes it possible for the sailboat to progress windward. Similarly, the social features of the counselee’s life such as family characteristics, family commitments, the culture that they have grown up in and cultural perception about careers and genders, the social structure, cultural values and traditions, and media have a significant influence on the career choices of individuals. For instance, children are most likely to identify themselves with their parents’ occupational site (Whiston and Keller, 2004) and, parents have the most important share in the environmental conditions that allow the emergence of the potential power that an individual has (Pişkin, 2002). Besides these, related to the influence of media, when it is asked students about their professional aspirations they typically addressed someone whom they see on television or read about in books (Cooper, 2013).
•System-Related Factors: Foresail is the sail situated at the front side of the sailboat. If one knows how to use it adequately, it helps to handle the vessel easier and increases the speed. Likewise, even though one does not have much ability to control system-related factors such as location, labor markets, economics, governmental factors, laws, education, and assessment (examination) systems; being aware of these realities and their effect on the career course, one can drive the ship safely to the right port.
•The Chance Factor: Wind and waves are always present and they are the determinants of temperature, current, weather activities, etc. which affect the safety and security of the voyage. Even though these factors can be managed to some degree, currents are not decided by the sailor or an unexpected shift in wind speed can be uncontrollable. This is why waves and wind represent the chance factor. “Extraneous factors” that one has almost no control over “can influence career choice and progress toward a vocation goal” (Korkut-Owen et al., 2015b, p. 5). Unexpected coincidences, a chance meeting, an unexpected discovery, an accident, health conditions, natural events, or a worldwide pandemic just as COVID-19 can change the course of the sailboat drastically.
In the model, every factor is defined as a substantial construct for the voyage of a sailboat, because these factors are interrelated (Korkut-Owen et al., 2015b). They have an influence on each other; they share a dynamic relationship.
This article aims to understand, as a chance factor, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, on the other factors that Career Sailboat Model presents as they have a profound effect on an individual’s career choices. In other words, as an extraneous factor COVID-19 pandemic influenced the other factors namely individual/personal factors, social factors, and system-related factors.
The COVID-19 pandemic
Human history many times faced the emergence of various types of communicable diseases and their spread over a large area. Bubonic Plague, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), influenza (Spanish flu, Asian flu, Hong Kong flu, Russian flu, etc.), and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) were some of the most destructive pandemics that emerged in the 20th and 21st centuries. Each pandemic or epidemic caused enormous damage to almost every aspect of human life. Many crises occurred because of these pandemics’ adverse impacts on health, bonds in society, economic development, and political scenarios (Qiu et al., 2017).
The world is now trying to deal with the effects of a brand-new and deadly disease. The agent is Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) and for this reason named COVID-19 (stands for Coronavirus disease) by World Health Organization (Sohrabi et al., 2020; World Health Organization, 2021). According to the data shared by WHO, globally, as of the end of 2021, there have been 272 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, and this number includes more than 5 million people’s death (World Health Organization, 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic has damaging effects on mental health, too. For example, a study conducted with 1,210 participants by Wang and colleagues in February 2020 in China exhibited that 53.8% of respondents ranked the psychological effect of the pandemic as moderate or severe; 16.5% reported their depressive symptoms as moderate to severe, and 28.8% of them reported moderate to severe anxiety symptoms. According to the research that had been done by using the electronic health records of 5.2 million young people, during the COVID-19 pandemic, eating disorders incidents were 15.3% higher in 2020 when it is compared with previous years (Taquet et al., 2021). Also, the pandemic crisis has resulted in a momentous decline in employment, especially for women, youth, and medium- and low-skilled workers (Monitor, 2021, 7th ed.; Park and Inocencio, 2020; Maestripieri, 2021; Sun et al., 2021). The data shared by International Labor Organization (Monitor, 2021, 8th ed.,) declares that in 2019, the youth represented only 13 percent of total employment; however, with the outbreak of the pandemic, they made up 34.2 percent of employment losses in 2020.
These numbers undoubtedly reveal that COVID-19 has devastating effects on millions of people. Even though people had faced pandemics in early history, still the outbreak of COVID-19 is considered an unexpected event. In the course of career decisions, before the emergence of this infectious disease, one might not take a pandemic into account to draw oneself a future career plan accordingly. However, when a sailboat comes across an unexpectedly strong wave that can damage the hull and the sails, in turn, these can change the course or the destination port; an impactful event like the COVID-19 Pandemic can change and influence personal, social, and system-related factors in an individual’s life which can affect the career course.
This article seeks to demonstrate by using the studies related to the COVID-19 pandemic, how COVID-19, as a chance factor, has an influence on personal, social, and system-related factors that are mentioned in the Career Sailboat Model and how these four factors can influence the overall career course of an individual.
The COVID-19 pandemic vs. individual/personal factors
Personal factors refer to individual characteristic features that can impact an individual’s career choices. As specified in Career Sailboat Model “interest, aptitudes, skills, values, goals, expectations, personal characteristics, physical/health conditions, perception of the individual about him/herself and professions, past and current experiences, job experience, vocational maturity, hobbies, perceptions of the ideal job, self-efficacy, learning experience and academic achievement” can be counted as individual/personal factors which can have an effect on individual’s career course (Korkut-Owen et al., 2015a, p. 5).
Our individual differences shape the way we perceive the situation and this is why every individual experiences this unhoped-for pandemic incident very uniquely. Thus, the distinctive experiences of individuals can lead them to feel and behave differently as well in their career course. For example, during the pandemic healthcare workers were in a very critical position; they had to deal with hundreds of patients, they were working extended hours without sleeping and they were always at risk of infection. Thus, it could be very reasonable for many students to give up on this profession. However, 62.7% of nursing students in China reported that COVID-19 has a positive influence on their future career choice in nursing (Bai et al., 2021). The important point is students who are influenced positively also reported less severe depression and anxiety than the others who decide not to choose to nurse for their future careers. In addition, being satisfied with the majors in medicine is associated with an increase in willingness to be a specialist in respiratory medicine and infectious disease after the pandemic (Deng et al., 2021).
During the pandemic, maybe the most heard phrases were social isolation and social distance. Schools switched to distance learning, and the home office idea and remote work became prominent. That is why some researchers assumed that the new work and education arrangements are the “golden age for introverts” (Brooks and Moser, 2020), and as extroversion is associated with activity and sociability, this period had more negative effects on extroverts. Liu et al. (2021) support this assumption. Based on the data, extroverts, it is more likely to experience higher levels of stress during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic as they were not able to engage in social activities the way they could before the pandemic. However, because introverts have relatively fewer social interactions than extroverts (Lucas et al., 2008), they did not suffer from this period the way their extrovert counterparts do. On the other hand, Wei (2020) deviates from this common belief and literature. According to the research, individuals with higher introversion or lower extraversion are more likely to experience higher loneliness, depression, and anxiety as a response to changing social environment concerning COVID-19. If it is considered the behavior pattern of introverted individuals, the results can be understandable: As, introverts are engaged in fewer help-seeking activities (Swickert et al., 2002; Atik and Yalçin, 2011; Kakhnovets, 2011), and they are more likely to turn inward to cope with negative experiences and emotions (Shapiro and Alexander, 1975), as claimed by Wei, these personal traits of introverts can be the reason for their depression and anxiety. Even though in the literature, extroverts’ and introverts’ reasons for suffering from negative emotions like anxiety and stress are different, it is clear that they both experienced increases in those negative emotions. And unfortunately, from the perspective of an individual’s career, anxiety and stress can lead young individuals to make wrong decisions (Remmers and Zander, 2018) or future anxiety about their career may not allow them to make fruitful decisions (Mahmud et al., 2021). In a similar manner, employees having these negative emotions severely can result in impaired work performance, accidents, and sickness absence (Haslam et al., 2005) and those can cause disadvantages in an individual’s career. This is why it is very important for individuals and career counselors to understand the actual reason for experiencing negative emotions and how those affect the career path. For example in the case of introverts and extroverts, we can conclude that individuals who engage in more introverted behaviors can be more comfortable working from home unless there is no hazardous situation like COVID-19 which is an enormous stressor. For them, remote working is not the cause of their distress but the negative environment that the COVID-19 pandemic created. Understanding this point can help individuals to make better career choices and besides, and it helps counselors to guide their clients in a more realistic and beneficial way.
The fear and uncertainty that pandemic conditions created increased anxiety and worries in the workforce about their future career (Wang et al., 2020). On the contrary, psychologically resilient and hopeful individuals’ are more skillful in career adaptability and career optimism in the case of future career plans (Keleş and Özkan, 2016; Özkan, 2017; Alnıaçık et al., 2021). Besides, psychological resilience is highly correlated with self-efficacy and active coping (Rees et al., 2015). Self-efficacy is an individual’s belief in their own capacity to adequately perform a particular task (Bandura, 1977), and self-efficacy is moderately correlated with work performance (Stajkovic and Luthans, 1998; Judge et al., 2007). Coping is an adjustment process as a response to a negative event (Rees et al., 2015), and seeking the use of coping strategies is highly associated with greater job satisfaction (Welbourne et al., 2007). The research conducted by Karaşar and Canlı (2020) with 518 people from Turkey shows that educators and people with higher levels of education are psychologically more resilient and researchers infer that the level of education can be positively correlated with coping skills and depression prevention. In addition, there is more research supporting the findings (Bonanno, 2004; Frankenberg et al., 2013). On the other hand, Bozdağ and Ergün’s (2020) results contradicted the previous findings: The research is done in Turkey with 214 healthcare workers including doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers. Doctors found their psychological resilience level is the lowest among other healthcare workers. With respect to these two studies, it can be said that occupational stressors can be influential on people’s resilience. Being psychologically resilient is a beneficial skill for individuals to deal with work stress resulting from the changing work environment caused by the pandemic. Low levels of resilience can cause experiencing negative emotions more often which can have a great negative impact on work performance.
Based on the Career Sailboat Model, COVID-19 is a chance factor that has an impact on an individual factor’s career choices. According to their personal characteristics, people are influenced differently. The pandemic can affect or trigger being vulnerable to anxiety or stress, perception of work, practicing physical activities, the desire of engaging in activities with people or dislike of social environments, self-efficacy, level of resilience, and flexibility level to adapt to changing situations. In turn, all these factors influenced by the chance factor can affect the career pattern of an individual.
The COVID-19 pandemic vs. social factors
The social factors of career choice imply the factors related to society. The immediate environment in which the individual lives is raised, or somehow the person interacts has an influential aspect on the career choice. According to Korkut-Owen et al. (2015b), family characteristics, structures, and values, the expectations and realities of the culture regarding career, common values, gender roles, social structure, traditions, exposure to media, etc. can be counted as influential social factors in individuals’ career course.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, related to their job experience and work environments, individuals encountered different types of challenges or conveniences. Much research done during the COVID-19 period has shown that the social factors mentioned above are essential factors responsible for the distinct experiences of individuals.
As mentioned earlier, not to let the COVID-19 virus spread more, many companies switched to remote work (Hickman and Saad, 2020). Besides, to control the pandemic, governments decided to close most child care centers (Shockley et al., 2021) and schools by continuing with remote learning. Even though the decision was sensible to reduce the transmission of the virus (Cauchemez et al., 2009), it resulted in a substantial increase in the childcare responsibilities of parents of a young child. The situation was especially formidable for dual-earner parents because they had to simultaneously fulfill both their work responsibilities and childcare (Shockley et al., 2021). On the other hand, as researchers demonstrate, mothers and fathers were not affected in the same manner; the pandemic exacerbated the gender gap (Arntz et al., 2020; Carli, 2020; Feng and Savani, 2020; Collins et al., 2021). As Feng and Savani (2020) mentions, in the literature, even though post-COVID-19 period there were little or no gender differences in work productivity or job satisfaction; during the pandemic, working mothers’ perceived work productivity and job satisfaction are more negatively affected than fathers. Many families, intentionally or unintentionally, revert to the traditional gender roles that imply women are responsible for childcare and housework, while men have to work (Ickes, 1993). Collins et al. (2021) after examining the U.S.A population of dual-earner and married heterosexual parents from February to April 2020 found that the work hours of mothers of young children were more vulnerable to reduction. While the fathers’ work hours were relatively unchanged, mothers’ work hours decreased by about 5 percent at the peak of COVID-19. The decrease in work performance, reduction in work hours, being not able to satisfy the work expectations can be penalized by inflexible employers (Stone, 2007; Blair-Loy, 2009), and in the case, that male worker’s performance remains the same can deliver them the disproportionate benefit in pay raises promotions, or work-related opportunities (Collins et al., 2021).
The families that do not construct equal division of housework cause women to receive the lowest well-being and performance (Shockley et al., 2021). As Ozer (1995) shows the burden of domestic labor, childcare, homeschooling, and the responsibilities of the paid job relative to lower well-being and greater psychological distress. On the other hand, the application of the egalitarian strategy which means couples perform division of labor allowed husbands and wife to preserve their well-being and maintain satisfactory job performance (Shockley et al., 2021).
The family structure, values and beliefs, cultural expectations, and gender roles are social factors that have an impact on the career course, according to CSM. From the examples, it can be inferred that COVID-19 influenced these factors. For instance, as it is mentioned above, during the COVID-19 period for some couples, the traditional gender roles became more obvious and some couples carried an egalitarian pathway of dealing with the responsibilities. In both cases, the outcomes are different in the work performance, psychological well-being, job satisfaction, and career advancement of individuals. If a woman is not expected to be responsible for all the housework, and childcare while she is pursuing her career, she also can get a chance to be successful, receive good pay and promotions for their work, and more importantly, she does not lose her job. Similarly, having a discouraging family can be seen as a disadvantage for many students. It is very important whether families are supporting the remote learners while they are in lessons or as they think their son/daughter is doing “nothing” so they can cook, clean, or do mechanical work. In other cases, whether families have enough time for their children to support their learning, can be a very distinctive feature for especially primary school students in the future. Shortly, the way individuals receive support from their social environment affects their success in their careers. This is why it can be said that the effect of COVID-19 on the social structure and the way the social norms receive it affects individuals’ future career decisions.
The COVID-19 pandemic vs. system-related factors
Unless making a critical change in their lives, system-related factors are the ones that individuals have limited ability to control over them. Governmental issues, policies and priorities, technological advancement of the country, laws, economics, location, labor market, assessment system of the region, and education system are counted as system-related factors.
In the absence of vaccines and medication, most governments made some interventions tailored to their society to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Some governments used quite harsh and restrictive methods such as lockdowns executed by police or army interventions; whereas, others tried to use risk-communication methods which are less disruptive such as educating and actively communicating with the public about the virus and encouraging them to keep social distance and staying home (Haug et al., 2020).
Curfews, lockdowns, and restricting places where people can gather for an extended period, such as shops, restaurants, work offices, schools, universities, etc. were helpful strategies to gain control over the damage of the virus. While these measures were protecting people from the physical effect of the virus, they created some other consequences. For example, they lead to drastic changes in the job market, business sector, and consumer behavior (Donthu and Gustafsson, 2020). Countries around the globe adopted distinct approaches to managing the dramatic changes in the job markets and infrastructure. The countries that have enough financial strength, supported businesses to help them to remain in the job market; however, the others could not afford to do the same. In the latter, small businesses especially could not deal with the changes in the economy and they were forced to close.
The sectors that need the physical presence of customers, such as tourism, entertainment, and hospitality faced the highest employment loss (Donthu and Gustafsson, 2020). It is very likely that before the pandemic, students who consider taking part in the tourism sector could change their minds. According to İflazoğlu et al. (2021), 44.7% of the adolescents receiving tourism education think that the tourism sector is not a reliable choice due to the pandemic.
When we turn the other side of the coin, we see that internet-based businesses are dramatically booming; online shopping, online entertainment, food delivery, online education, and so on. For instance, during the pandemic gyms were closed because of the lockdowns, or people preferred to stay at home as a precaution for probable infection. During this period, personal trainers began to create content on digital platforms (e.g., Youtube, Instagram) and online training, digital fitness, yoga, and various physical activity contents gained popularity (Sokolova and Perez, 2021; Kim, 2022). Besides, even though restaurants were physically closed, they implemented many different innovations and improved their products and service to meet the growing demand for online food delivery (Gavilan et al., 2021).
Staying home was a substantial response to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus during the absence of vaccines and medicines. However, it caused severe economic consequences across the globe. From the Great depression in 1930, to the COVID-19 period, we encountered the largest rate of employment loss (Donthu and Gustafsson, 2020). This pressure on the job market led to changes in producer and customer behavior. It can be said that novel situations can cause different demands. Even when the case is income and employment loss, the flexibility and suitability of individuals can help individuals to make innovations for their workplaces, change their mindsets, be open to novel options, and benefit from the new opportunities to build a new career plan.
Conclusion
Career Sailboat Model is a postmodern career-counseling model in line with constructivism. More explicitly, by using a sailboat metaphor gives individuals enough space to create their own career path and their own story. The Career Sailboat model has four main components responsible for individuals’ career choices. These are individual factors, social factors, system-related factors, and chance factors. These factors are interrelated and have dynamic relationships. This is why while an individual makes their decision they all both affect each other and influence the career course.
In this article, we defined the COVID-19 Pandemic as a chance factor, and with the examples from the literature regarding COVID-19 we tried to examine how it affected other factors namely individual, social and system-related, and made predictions about how all these factors can affect the overall career decision with the effect of COVID-19.
For example, the experienced anxiety and stress levels correlated with psychological resilience and self-efficacy. If the career that the individual pursues has high levels of stressors but the individual has a lower level of flexibility and resilience, the chosen career can lead the individual to experience depression or other negative emotions. In the case of Covid-19, individuals had a chance to evaluate their flexibility as a response to a changing work environment.
Besides, the social environments of individuals are also influenced by the situation COVID-19 created. Some families became supportive and egalitarian while some others went back to more traditional values which resulted in a widening gender gap. The gender gaps put women employees in a more vulnerable position and put their careers in danger. Inequality in the share of responsibilities in housework and childcare caused women to experience less work satisfaction than their male colleagues, which used to be almost equal.
It is known that there is no country that is not affected by COVID-19. However, it does not have the same impact on developed, developing, or underdeveloped countries. Their available resources to support the public were not equal for every country, and most counties could not provide enough financial support. From the time of the Great Depression, we experienced the highest level of employment loss. All these factors can have triggering effects on the future career anxiety of individuals. Students may consider engaging in such professions that do not get affected by extreme events as much as tourism sector does.
In short, there is always a chance to encounter extraneous events in our lives. Our experience of these events gets its shape according to our personal features, the characteristics of the environment we are engaged in, and the major system we belong to, and these events can affect all of these factors and our experience as well. There is an endless reciprocal dialog between different factors. This is why the occurrence of these types of extraordinary events can lead us to redefine our career paths. In the article, we aimed to demonstrate how accurate the Career Sailboat Model is by stating that combining all these factors is crucial to construct one’s career decision and supporting its use more extensively by career counselors. Even though the world encountered pandemics earlier, none of them had large-scale consequences as much as COVID-19 caused. That is why there are still limited resources, and further research on the impact of COVID-19 on career choices will be beneficial to demonstrate the effects.
Even though the world encountered pandemics earlier, none of them had large-scale consequences as much as COVID-19 caused. That is why the literature is limited, and further research on the impact of COVID-19 on career choices will be beneficial to understand the dynamics. In career choices in the post-pandemic era, it is essential to investigate how career choices have been affected by human-made or natural calamities such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The recent pandemic outbreak opened doors to new career choices and brought new job market challenges. The pandemic has changed our perception of traditional day job office working culture. It made us realize that we no longer depend on office settings to work, and it made us consider online home-based jobs, irrespective of daily traveling. In terms of time, quality, accountability, transparency, and cost-effectiveness, such transformations must be examined. The pandemic has given a glimpse of working online home-based jobs and understanding its advantages and disadvantages.
On the other hand, service delivery jobs were unable to work from home during this period. Instead, many people who were engaged in that type of job, for example, health workers, police officers, or shipping workers had to work even more than they usually do; however, also they earned even higher; therefore, understanding their experiences and why people want to engage in these jobs or drop them off is significant. In addition to chance factors, researchers can deeply investigate the impacts of other factors (personal, social, and system-related) in the Career Sailboat Model. Researching, exploring, and working on understanding all these aspects is thought that will be enlightening for career counseling professionals in terms of aligning with current trends in career choices and job markets.
Author contributions
All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
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Keywords: career counseling, career decision making, career sailboat model, the COVID-19 pandemic, career choices
Citation: Nazir T and Özçiçek A (2023) Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the career choices of individuals by using career sailboat model. Front. Educ. 7:1036971. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2022.1036971
Edited by:
Ilaria Riccioni, University of Macerata, ItalyReviewed by:
Nurul Hidayati Rofiah, Ahmad Dahlan University, IndonesiaMetin Pişkin, Ankara University, Turkey
Shah Alam, Aligarh Muslim University, India
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*Correspondence: Thseen Nazir, ✉ dGhzZWVuLm5hemlyQGlodS5lZHUudHI=