In our current unsettled economy, the job market calls for viewing career not as a lifetime commitment to one or two employers but as selling services and skills to a series of employers who need projects completed. In negotiating each new project, the prospective employee usually concentrates on salary yet also seeks control of the working environment, work-family balance, and training for the next job.

It is completely reasonable for people to discover that in post-industrial economies, such as ours, individuals may no longer work at one job for 30 years. New technologies, globalization, and job redesign require workers to more actively construct their careers. They can expect to change jobs relatively often and make frequent transitions, each time recycling through minicycles of growth, exploration, stabilization, management, and disengagement as they move within or across different stages of their career.