Precarious employment as a prerequisite for career surfing

Rubtsova Nadezhda ORCID: 0000-0002-1323-4741 Doctor of Psychology Professor of the Department of General Psychology and Occupational Psychology of the Russian New University (Moscow) 22 Radio str., Moscow, 105005, Russia hope432810@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Len'kov Sergei Leonidovich ORCID: 0000-0001-6934-3229 Doctor of Psychology Professor, Chief Analyst of the Directorate for Coordination of Scientific Research of the Russian Academy of Education 8 Pogodinskaya str., Moscow, 119121, Russia new_psy@mail.ru

In unstable socio-economic conditions, traditional theories of career development began to lose their predictive essence ^[13]. Due to the digital transformation of society, with the advent of a modern form of employment, such as e-employment, including remote and hybrid forms of work, changes in the processes of professional development sharply raise questions about predictable changes in professional careers ^[20]. It is noted that the relevance of traditional psychological classifications of the sphere of work has decreased ^[10], conceptual approaches to understanding the profession, career, workplace have changed ^[21]. In this regard, the need for clients to seek qualified assistance from professional consultants has increased in order to solve the problems of job search and balanced career building ^[1].

In this study, attention is focused on intensively developing phenomena – unstable employment and career surfing, consisting in frequent changes of place of work, position, type of work, etc. In the scientific literature, career surfing as a holistic phenomenon has not yet received widespread attention. At the same time, the phenomenon appears to be massive and increasing. Thus, the basis for the organization of the study was an objective contradiction between the actual importance of the phenomena of precarization and career surfing and their insufficient knowledge. The purpose of the study is to describe, analyze and conceptualize the phenomenon of career surfing and precarization of labor as a prerequisite for its manifestation.

To achieve this goal, conceptual and theoretical analysis, subject-categorical analysis, systematization and generalization of research results and social practice data were used. The design of the study included the solution of the following tasks: analysis of the manifestations of career surfing, aimed at identifying its varieties and essential features; differentiation of the concept of career surfing with a number of similar concepts characterizing the dynamism and instability of career development; systematization and generalization of the causes, consequences and problems of studying career surfing.

The manifestations of career surfing are heterogeneous. Among them, one of the most widespread is job hopping, which has now acquired a global character. Thus, according to studies conducted in different countries, from 27% to 33% of current employees are going to change their employer company within the next two years ^[22]. A specific subspecies of career surfing as a job change is its radical manifestation, which consists in changing the sphere of work and/ or key labor functions, i.e., in fact, the direction of professional and career development. For example, the precedents of "double", "triple", etc. careers are becoming more widespread ^[12].

In foreign literature, the intensification of job changes is often associated with generations Y (millennials) and Z. Thus, according to Zippia (2022), millennials aged 25 to 34 years stayed in the same job for an average of 2.8 years, while workers aged 55 to 64 years – 9.9 years ^[23]. According to Lever (2022), 65% of Generation Z representatives planned to change jobs within a year ^[17].

Russian researchers also apply the theory of generations, but the widespread development of career surfing in our country began under the influence of other reasons – during the period of "perestroika", when a significant part of the able-bodied population took on any job that turned up, often unrelated to previous experience, qualifications and, moreover, individual preferences. Although later global trends of intergenerational differences, of course, also began to contribute to the spread of career surfing in Russia. At the same time, the issues of career surfing development in our country, especially in the period 1985-2000, actually remain open.

Thus, already during the period of "perestroika", career surfing in Russia reached significant proportions. At the same time, its ambivalent nature manifested itself: on the one hand, its negative consequences are obvious (a decrease in professionalism, a decrease in professional and personal self-realization, etc.), but on the other hand, such forced surfing helped people and labor organizations to survive another "time of troubles", to preserve the possibilities of subsequent professional development. Surfing the pandemic is considered as a constructive strategy for survival in difficult conditions applied not to an employee, but to firms, associating it with manifestations of adaptability, elasticity, and entrepreneurial creativity ^[15].

For domestic labor organizations, frequent and significant renewal of the labor collective is common ^[7], and staff turnover on a scale of up to 50% of the list is considered the norm of the market (cited by ^[2]).

A qualitatively different manifestation of career surfing is job surfing, i.e., in fact, job search. For example, a website has been operating in the Netherlands since 2015 (https://jobsurfing.nl/home ), created by JobSurfing and providing both job search and company employee exchange. Surfing jobs today are usually carried out using the Internet, being a kind of web surfing.

Important specific (pre-professional) manifestations of career surfing are associated with the choice of the direction of professional training and educational institution. For example, modern applicants often apply for admission to many universities at once, and often to several heterogeneous fields of study; another manifestation consists in changing the specialty, which is often found during the transition from bachelor's to master's degree; another manifestation can be correlated with obtaining a heterogeneous mosaic education, which modern young people often receive within the framework of a variety of short-term courses and trainings ^[7].

A specific type of career surfing can also be considered periodic conditions of the unemployed and retraining, which V.A. Tolochek drew attention to, considering the modern specifics of career development ^[12].

A special type (covering surfing and work and education) is transnational career surfing, which develops within the framework of distance employment, education or residence permit abroad, academic exchange, labor migration, etc. ^[7].

Thus, the manifestations of career surfing are multifaceted. Career surfing is a multifaceted phenomenon consisting of a relatively rapid and frequent change in the trajectory of professional and/or career development.

Some characteristics of social surfing can also be projected onto career surfing, for example: social surfing is a type of predominantly horizontal social mobility in the form of a transition from one project to another; at the same time, the project nature of activity does not exclude vertical orientation, but it takes the form of a spiral in which there is a transition from simple projects to complex, from inefficient to effective ^[7]. At the same time, the concept of social surfing is more general, generative, because such surfing manifests itself: a) at many stages of life – in childhood, adolescence, adolescence, youth (and sometimes further); b) in many life situations (learning, socialization, etc.) and spheres (for example, romantic and marital relations, choice of place of residence, joining communities, etc.) ^[4].

A type of social surfing is career surfing, covering periods of professional self-determination and education, employment, work activity, as well as situations of changing and searching for jobs, types of work, career development trajectories, etc.

Career and social surfing are generally ambivalent: the sliding, superficial nature of a social or career identity may be due not so much to a certain frivolous attitude to life (career) as to natural search activity in conditions of lack of personal and professional experience. At the same time, over time, the marker of "easy change" receives a counterbalance in the form of accumulated positive experience, contributing to the stabilization of social relations (including career position) and resistance to the temptations of endless improvement. At some point, the optant of career choice begins to understand that the enticing promises of the employer do not always correspond to reality, that each type of work has its own difficulties, that high earnings require qualifications, experience and significant labor costs.

Many authors pay attention to the heterogeneous justifications of the observed epoch of total instability and uncertainty and using various constructs for this purpose. Thus, the concept of liquid modernity is widely known ^[3], expressing the modern specifics of various aspects of human and social life, including many causes and manifestations of career surfing. Heterogeneous manifestations of career surfing are often also described in terms of mobility – social, professional, career and other, including geographical and social migrations. This is, for example, talent mobility, the intensive development of which has been observed in recent years and is associated with an increase in personal and career development opportunities ^[18].

On the other hand, negative aspects of professional mobility have also been identified. Thus, in a sample of employees of South Korean firms, it was found that unstable work significantly reduces the meaningfulness and subjective significance of work, and ultimately leads to increased intentions to change jobs and staff turnover ^[16].

Labor mobility and career surfing are associated with a common socio-psychological basis. Thus, among representatives of Russian youth aged 14 to 30 years, 30% are ready to work in any field – the main thing is to have a decent income ^[11]. In contrast, modern employers are often concerned primarily with the pursuit of the cheapest possible labor, including skilled labor ^[19], which also contributes to increased labor mobility and career surfing.

Highlighting the differences between career surfing and relevant mobility (social, career, professional), it can be noted that mobility, unlike surfing, is not necessarily related to search activity – it may be forced; in addition, mobility may be one–time, while surfing is a repetitive mobility.

One of the objective reasons for the development of career surfing is to increase flexible employment, including: short-term contracts, outsourcing, outstaffing, freelancing, flexible employment systems; part-time, project, temporary employment; work from home and other remote forms of work, entrepreneurship, self-employment, etc. ^[8]. The increase in flexible employment reflects the development of the gig economy ^[12]. In the United States, freelance and independent work continues to grow faster than traditional employment, and currently covers 36% of the American workforce ^[20].

The key factors ensuring employment flexibility are global digitalization, as well as the processes of cyberspace development, cybersocialization, digital educational environment, virtual interaction, introduction of new information technologies related to big data, cloud structures, artificial intelligence, robots, etc. ^[22].

Digitalization is one of the key determinants of another objective reason for the expansion of career surfing – the transformation of the content of professional activity. Over the past three years, jobs have changed faster than in the previous 30 years, and the key factor in the transformation of the economy in the next five years will remain the introduction of new technologies, primarily digital; at the same time, there is a wide change in the skills required of workers ^[22].

On the other hand, a factor in the development of career surfing is the expanding simplification and deprofessionalization of labor: for example, about 75% of the labor market in most industrialized countries of the world is work consisting of performing repetitive tasks that do not require special efforts in problem solving or training ^[19].

The development of transnational career surfing is associated with intensive globalization ^[19], the expansion of transnational migration and mobility, including those related to the development of innovations in education ^[14]. Thus, according to Mercer, in 2023-2024, such types of mobility as international remote workers and foreigners employed abroad or locally are expected to increase (cited in ^[18]).

Many authors have identified the negative social and economic consequences of uncertainty, under-fulfillment of career choices and career ambitions at a young age (cit. by: ^[8]).

On the other hand, the constructive possibilities of career surfing are indicated by the following thought of V.I. Ilyin: a surfer is looking for a place in the space of types of employment that is adequate to his abilities and interests, which is quite traditional, but the fundamental difference is that the "man of the rut" is inclined to accept fate, even after making a mistake, while a surfer He considers it as an episode from which one can start and continue the search ^[7].

One of the psychological foundations of career surfing can be considered a pragmatic attitude common among young people, expressed in readiness for hypermobility – a change of job or place of life, provided that you receive a favorable work invitation ^[5]. According to Get Experts, over the past five years, the priorities of Russians in their work have changed: the key factor motivating employees to stay at their former place of work is now not career opportunities and interesting tasks (as it was before), but comfortable working conditions (cited in ^[2]).

Characterizing the consequences of the widespread use of career surfing, the following can be noted. Work is no longer a reliable axis around which self–determination, identity and life plans are grouped - now it is evaluated by its ability to be interesting and satisfying not so much the ethical vocation of the manufacturer as "the aesthetic needs and desires of the consumer, the thrill seeker and the collector of experiences" ^[3]. However, from our point of view, the noted inability of a person to make work a "reliable axis" of the life path, although widespread, is a kind of artificial, "learned" helplessness based on the cults of individualism and consumption.

In other words, such a path of sociogenesis is an anthropologically dead end, therefore it requires constructive transformation, and there are certainly similar possibilities. Bauman also recognizes this fact, noting that everything boils down to the strength of the personality in question, and the fluid environment of modernity will contribute to a variety of survival strategies (Bauman, 2008, p. 192), although modern "soft capitalism" is no less firm and cruel than its "hard" ancestor (Bauman, 2008, p. 236). This is consistent with the opinion that in the conditions of modern capitalism, many people feel helpless in their work and feel hopeless of career prospects (Nydegger, Enides, 2017, p. 200), being in constant search of additional sources of income to close their financial obligations (loans, mortgages, etc.).

At the same time, if we consider career surfing as one of the strategies for the formation of individual "human capital", we can fully agree with the idea that the capitalization of human resources depends not only on the market situation, but also on the subjectivity of their owners, i.e. on "the desire, will and ability to use their resources as capital in the context of existing conditions" (Ilyin, 2023, p. 32). Similarly, constructive career surfing can be considered as a strategy for the formation of internal, subjective resources. It is also possible to identify some practical measures that contribute to the positivization of career surfing:

- increased involvement in work, social and professional interactions, the life of an employment or educational organization: to date, a lot of data has been accumulated showing that such an increase in involvement in the field of labor contributes to reducing staff turnover, retaining talents, increasing job satisfaction, increasing the innovativeness of work, and in the field of education – reducing the level of deductions, improving productivity and completion of the development of educational programs (Pavlova et al., 2023);

- the transition from a career path to a career portfolio: a career in modern conditions (and even more so – a career of the future) is "not climbing the career ladder, but a portfolio that needs to be supervised" (Rinne, 2023);

- purposeful work on the formation of prerequisites and conditions for the implementation of constructive career surfing (including career guidance, competence of professional choice and development, adequate professional self–determination, etc.), as well as on the prevention and relief of factors of destructive career surfing - both external and internal (including personal, such as the priority of egocentric and consumer values-semantic orientations).

Based on the results of the study, the following conclusions can be formulated. Career surfing is a multifaceted phenomenon that consists in changing the trajectory of professional and/or career development. The types of career surfing include changing and/or searching for: a job, position, type of work, profession, specialty, sphere or direction of professional or career development. Thus, precarization of labor illustrates the manifestation of career surfing.

In methodological terms, career surfing is a social and psychological construct that has deep connections with the constructs of social surfing, mobility, fluid modernity, etc. The reasons for the expansion and development of career surfing are diverse and include: the transformation of jobs and types of work (including under the influence of digitalization), the development of flexible forms of employment, the expansion of geographical and social migrations, etc. By its social role, career surfing is ambivalent and includes both constructive consequences (for example, coping with situations of career and social uncertainty) and destructive ones. In general, career surfing has prospects for continuing empirical research, including a comparative analysis of the dynamics of the phenomenon of precarious employment in different regions of Russia, the development of psychodiagnostics tools, and monitoring the current state of various types of career surfing.

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