ABSTRACT
For today’s organizations, right people are key differentiators that give them competitive advantage. Due to globalization, career contexts and work environments have changed. Workforce diversity has increased due to technological advancements and the use of outsourcing, part time, and temporary employees. In conjunction with environmental changes, individuals are also altering their career attitudes and behaviors. This comes as a response to the increase in lifespan (and thus working lives), changes in family structures (such as dual-career couples), and the growing number of individuals seeking to fulfill needs for personal learning, development, and growth. One of the most important challenges for HR managers is to acquire and retain the Gen Y employees (born between late 1970s and mid-1990s) who are likely to comprise the bulk of employees.
In times of frequently changing work environments with decreased job stability, it is often more possible for an employee to pursue his career with not one single organization during his or her lifetime but with multiple over time. The decline of the traditional organizational career requires new ways of viewing careers. Over the last decade, two new perspectives on careers have emerged and become popular in the organizational literature: the protean career and the boundaryless career. This chapter reviews this new concept of individual career development practiced by the Gen Y employees whose expectations and preferences are different from their predecessors.
