Constructing the search for a job in academia from the perspectives of self-regulated learning strategies and social cognitive career theory

Abstract

Four international doctoral graduates who found jobs in American academia wrote narratives about their job search process and were interviewed afterwards for this descriptive qualitative study. Retrospective narratives, responses to open-ended questions, and discussions in focus groups supported the integration of the self-regulated learning strategies into the social cognitive career theory to explain the learning aspect of the job search process. The strategies used by the participants during the job search process were identified with most categories of the self-regulated learning strategies in the literature, and the participants’ self-oriented cultural perspectives and how these cultural perspectives interacted with perceptions about the job search process in the academic world of work were examined. The findings of this study contribute to the social cognitive career theory by introducing the job candidates’ self-regulated learning procedure and could be resources for doctoral students who plan to make a successful transition from students to professors and/or researchers.