Strategies for a Successful Career Entry

Nowadays, the entry into working life takes place within a rapidly changing work environment (e.g. Beck, 1986; Giddens, 1990; Rosa, 2005).Such an accelerated and flexible working world is demanding for new employees especially at entry. A study is conducted in order to show which action strategies persons may apply for mastering their career entry. Specifically, the aim of the study is to answer the question whether personal resources (in the sense of action strategies) are beneficial for a successful start into working life and thus impact work engagement and innovativeness positively. Self-leadership is chosen as a core strategy for work engagement, and humor styles for innovativeness. The study focus is on employees at an early stage of their professional life from the generation of the so-called Digital Natives (e.g. Prensky, 2001) for whom the handling of new technologies was part of their childhood socialization. Furthermore, we examine whether the relationship between personal resources and work engagement and innovativeness is comparable between men and women. We expect comparable socialization with new media and technologies for both genders, and thus an equal beneficial impact of increasing flexibility for both genders.Hence, both relevant strategies (self-leadership and humor styles) should be equally constructive.The data assessment will be conducted with a two-wave longitudinal study with standardized online questionnaires. For confirming the validity of the findings of the long term study, specific elements of the study are further examined experimentally in a laboratory setting.