Career stories illustrating 'planned happenstance'

The focus of these career stories is the theory of ‘planned happenstance'. Planned happenstance considers the traditional career development values of matching the self to opportunities and the role that individual development or social influences have but it also considers the factor of luck or happenstance in career development. Planned happenstance sees chance as both inevitable and, if managed appropriately, as a spark for creative career development. Within planned happenstance, a number of attitudes or skills have been identified as being particularly useful in supporting an individual's career development. These are curiosity, persistence, flexibility, optimism, risk taking. Most of the researchers in these career stories say that they rarely or indeed never plan for their careers. However many of them have adopted behaviours that are designed to have a positive impact on their careers. These may not be plans, but they are setting out a direction of travel and doing things that move them in this direction.

Helen Plant
"I thought a career might be a single occupation through which one might progress but this doesn't fit certain circumstances of anyone I know".

Jeff Stonehouse
"It may have been serendipitous in my finding this career, but in terms of progressing it, it has been hard work and reputation, getting other people to believe that you can do it".

Joanne Badge
"The concept of career means very little me! I guess I would term it just to collectively describe the jobs that I have held and the education I've received".

Susan
"I suppose I see career as employment that takes you in a direction - preferably across or upwards. It's not just a job".

Tim
"If any of my family had been to university I might not have had so many illusions about academia, and I might have been less motivated to persist in them".

Michael Gunn
"The more serendipitous way that I pursued my career is becoming less of an option. It is becoming more of the case that you've got to think about a career plan".

Neil Radford
"Luck is an interesting concept, I think it is possible to perceive that things are lucky when in fact they are largely influenced by other factors".

Riccardo Briganti
"Academia offers a lot of mobility, it is a global market. You have to move around as much as possible".....

Sam Ladner
"I believe in ‘planned serendipity'. I regularly go for coffee with people I don't actually know, just to make a new connection".