Turn career interests into realistic plans.

People and workplaces can both be described with six interest types. Fit between the two relates to satisfaction and to staying.

Holland, J. L. (1959). A theory of vocational choice. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 6(1), 35 to 45. Later: Making Vocational Choices, 3rd ed., 1997. View the paper

Learning runs a cycle: do the thing, reflect on it, form a rule, try again. Reading about the work is not the same as touching it.

Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice-Hall.

What a person believes they can do predicts what they attempt and how long they keep going. That belief is built by small wins, by watching people like them succeed, and by credible encouragement.

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191 to 215. Later: Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, 1997. View the paper

A career is built and re-told, not found once. In an unstable labour market, the ability to adapt matters more than a single good match.

Savickas, M. L. (2005). The theory and practice of career construction. In Career Development and Counseling: Putting Theory and Research to Work. Wiley.

Specific, hard goals beat "do your best". On complex work, the nearer learning goals and the strategy matter as much as the destination does.

Locke, E. A., and Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705 to 717. View the paper

Interests become goals and goals become action only when self-belief, expected outcomes, and the person’s real barriers and supports allow it. Barriers are part of the model, not noise around it.

Lent, R. W., Brown, S. D., and Hackett, G. (1994). Toward a unifying social cognitive theory of career and academic interest, choice, and performance. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 45(1), 79 to 122. View the paper