Ten metaphors of careers

Posted on April 17, 2024 by Martin Hahn, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

In her excellent book titled The Career Coaching Handbook, Julie Yates discusses ten metaphors related to careers. These metaphors are based on the theories of career. Career theories are developed by academics to help us make sense of people’s experiences and dozens have been developed over the last few decades

Some theories focus on the content of careers and career decisions, and others look at processes; some are heavily influenced by psychological theories of the individual while the philosophical origins of others are more sociological. These theories make our jobs much more difficult in that it is quite a challenge to keep all the different theoretical approaches in our heads at once, and to know how and when to use them to help us understand our clients better. One helpful framework is to look at the range of metaphors that the theories use to explain the notion of career.

1. Legacy metaphor: career as inheritance

These approaches are grounded in sociological thinking and hold that our career paths are (at least to some degree) inevitable, being a product of our family and upbringing, our genes, our geographical location or demographic factors such as our gender or ethnicity.

2. Craft metaphor: career as construction

This metaphor incorporates many of the key psychological theories that emphasize the agency of individuals and the role that they can play in determining their career paths. This metaphor encompasses the self-creation of career and the idea of career as part of an identity that helps to create a sense of self.

3. Seasons metaphor: career as cycle

This series of theories assumes that the processes of career planning and development are different at different stages in your life. These theories have, however, been widely criticised for being too inflexible and invoking unhelpful stereotypes.

4. Matching metaphor: career as fit

This metaphor can be explained by the idea of matching square pegs with square holes or finding people whose skills and interests match the needs and content of a job. Matching theories related to this metaphor have spawned myriad computer programs that link people’s interests, skills and values to appropriate job titles and (in theory) identify suitable occupations. But there are significant problems with this approach: it is hard to know what individual and job characteristics we should be measuring.

5. Path metaphor: career as journey

This is perhaps the most common of the career metaphors, and it incorporates the twin notions of movement between place and time. This metaphor, perhaps more than any other, has crept into common usage whenever we talk about careers: think about the notion of a career path, reaching a crossroads in your career, taking a step backwards, or finding yourself in a dead-end job.

6. Net work metaphor: career as encounters and relationships

Careers are not pursued in isolation. The network metaphor explores ideas of career as a social or political institution. The prevalence of networking as a way to get and keep a job, or to generate business highlights the importance of relationships, and a relatively recent wave of relational career decision-making theories.

7. Theatre metaphor: career as role

The organization can be viewed as your stage with you as the central character of a play, taking on different roles as you move through the story. Notions of role models help us to better understand how to play the part, and psychological contracts as they are negotiated and re-negotiated allow the nature of the role to be clarified and to evolve.

8. Economic metaphor: career as resource

Originally a metaphor conceptualized from the perspective of the employer, this metaphor is best known in the term ‘human resources’. Within the career development arena, the concept is encapsulated in the notion of ‘career capital’ which looks at a career in terms of a bank of resources that you build up with every new experience encountered.

9. Narrative metaphor: career as story

The value of career stories is grounded in the post-modern concept of multiple truths, which holds that there is no definitive ‘truth’ about someone’s career history. A single career history can be told from multiple different perspectives and the same incident can have quite different meanings depending on who sees it and their own take on it. Other researchers have also made use of this metaphor by making links between career ‘archetypes’, such as individual journeying and heroism, and ancient mythology.

10. Serendipity metaphor: career as a series of chance events

Luck plays a part in many career paths, and a number of theories put chance events at their core. According to some career theories, people look for lucky opportunities and be ready to capitalize on fortunate coincidences.

The construct of ‘career’ is clearly complicated. The opportunities and expectations within our contemporary working lives are in many ways quite different from those of our parents and grandparents.