The Delusional Belief Most Likely to Hold Your Career Back, According to Havard

The Delusional Belief Most Likely to Hold Your Career Back, According to Havard While its no secret that choosing a career is a tough decision, science says that many of job seekers are wronglyconsidering one major factor room for growth. While its ideal to work for a company that promises and, more importantly, demonstrates advancement opportunities, job seekers today should understand that climbing the career ladder doesnt look like it once did.In a recent Harvard Business Review article, psychology researcher Tania Luna and Weight Watchers international executive Jordan Cohen suggested that todays employees suffer from a belief in the career myth, which they describe as a delusional belief in the outdated idea of linear career progression.Luna and Cohen said that job seekers and employees can no longer rely on an outdated system of growth that presumes theyll be given incremental opportunities to advance withpromotions, raises and title changes. Rather, today, its more likely that employees will have to adapt to new roles, and its normal for them to switch companies and even hop industries over the course of their careers.When we envision a career, we imagine a direct path with a final destination, they wrote. And not long ago, this concept was useful... We no longer need to be good at predicting the future we now have to succeed when the future is unpredictable.The researchers added that it doesnt mean that employees are wasting time just because their careers dont follow a necessarily logical or at least continuous path either.Every job youve held and every relationship youve forged is a kind of key that can unlock a future opportunity, they wrote. The keys dont have to make sense together. There doesnt need to be a clear, linear narrative to explain how you got from A to B.This isnt the first time this advice has been shared. In 2013, Facebook COOSheryl Sandberg also said that it was better tothink of careers as a jungle gym than as a ladder.This advice i s especially applicable to millennials, who are notorious for job hopping. In fact, research commissioned by Jive Communications found that the average millennial has already had three jobs, and the majority of them start to look for another job before they hit the three-year mark in their current positions. Another24 percent are only at a job for six months to a year before they start hunting again, and 30 percent start looking between a year and 18 months.Likewise, Monster.comsMy First Job survey found that, among graduates 18 to 34 years old, 29 percent of candidates actually quit their first jobs before hitting their one-year marks.Sixty percent of the respondents said that they left for reasons regarding professional growth there were better work opportunities elsewhere.In short Millennials are job hopping because theyre on a mission to find a company that emphasizes personal growth. According to a 2014 report by the Intelligence Group, 72 percent of millennials want to be the ir own boss one day and, according to a 2015 survey by accounting firmErnst Young, millennials are the most likely generation to say that they would change jobs or careers, give up promotion opportunities, move their family to another place or take a pay cut to have flexibility and better manage work and family life.Theyre advancing through the jungle gym instead of up the ladder to grow their careers, and thats OK so long as theyre not on the hunt for more logical, linear growth.--AnnaMarie Houlis is a multimedia journalist and an adventure aficionado with a keen cultural curiosity and an affinity for solo travel. Shes an editor by day and a travel blogger at HerReport.org by night.