Careers in construction: An examination of the career narratives of young professionals and their emerging career self-concepts

This study explores the experiences of young professionals as they move through different career paths and narrate their careers. Drawing primarily from semi-structured in-depth interviews with 40 young professionals with at least three years of professional employment post-graduation from the same program of study as well as data obtained from the subjects' LinkedIn profiles, our findings suggest that young professionals engage in a dynamic process of constructing their career narratives with often complex emerging career self-concepts. While prior research suggests that people move toward an increasingly stable and cohesive self-concept as they attain a professional occupation, we find that there is an interplay between the need for flexibility to explore opportunities and to adapt to challenges, as well as the desire for stability and predictability that drives the construction of young professionals' careers. We also find that the way young professionals communicate their career narrative can differ in substantive ways from their external-facing resume, raising the potential for dissonance. Exploring the intricacies of developing career narratives is important for understanding how young professionals make sense of their career, which can better inform career counselors, recruiters, and hiring managers—as well as young professionals themselves—on how to integrate past, current, and desired future career experiences to allow for continuity and resiliency in their career self-concept and planning. •Young professionals (YPs) engage in a dynamic process of constructing their careers.•YPs desire both stability and a need for flexibility in their careers.•Career narratives of YPs reveal substantive differences from their resumes.•YPs' career narrative construction exposes complex emerging self-concepts.