Career coach preferences of medical students: coaching specialist or specialistic coach?

BACKGROUND: Medical students' demand for career coaching is growing. However, little is known about what type of career coach they prefer. Using the Warmth-Competence Framework, we investigated if and why medical students prefer physician coaches compared to career psychologist coaches. We also examined whether students' coach choice related to coaches' amount of experience with medical students. METHODS: In a two-by-two between participants vignette study (n = 147), we manipulated coach occupational background (physician vs. psychologist) and experience with coaching medical students (limited vs. considerable). Participants read one coach description, rated the likelihood that they would choose the coach, and rated the coach on dimensions of warmth and competence. RESULTS: Students who evaluated a physician career coach were more likely to choose the coach than students who evaluated a psychologist career coach. Students expected that a physician career coach would better understand their situation and be better able to provide career information, while they expected a psychologist career coach to have better conversation skills, all of which were relevant to choosing a coach. Coaches' experience with coaching medical students was unrelated to students' coach choice and their assessment of the coach's warmth and competence. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings highlight the relevance of coaches' occupational background and have implications for the implementation of career coach interventions. Medical schools could help students choose a career coach by providing information about the coach qualities that students value. Future studies could investigate whether career coaches with different occupational backgrounds differ in coach behaviors and coaching effectiveness.

How can hospitals engage their current employees in the recruitment of qualified nurses? A referral bonus and self-determination perspective.

AIMS: To investigate the impact of promising a referral bonus and an autonomous referral request on nurses' referral likelihood and the quality of their referrals. DESIGN: We applied a 2 × 2 between-participants factorial design with referral bonus and autonomous referral request as experimental variables. METHODS: In May 2019, 110 nurses working in Belgian hospitals were shown a fictitious e-mail with a request from their employer to look for potential new-hires and filled out an online survey measuring referral likelihood and quality. RESULTS: Promising a referral bonus did not affect nurses' referral likelihood and quality. Instead supporting self-determination theory, nurses exposed to the autonomous request were more likely to refer and assure referral quality than those exposed to the controlling request. CONCLUSION: Hospitals can increase nurses' referral likelihood and quality by framing their referral request in an autonomy-supportive way. IMPACT: Recruiting nurses are more important than ever in the current Covid-19 crisis. Our findings offer practical insights on how hospitals can engage their employees in the recruitment of nurses (i.e. through framing referral requests in an autonomy-supportive way).

Lifelong development in medicine: a thematic analysis of coaching goals throughout medical careers.

OBJECTIVES: Healthcare grapples with staff shortages and rising burnout rates for medical students, residents and specialists. To prioritise both their well-being and the delivery of high-quality patient care, it becomes imperative to deepen our understanding of physicians' developmental aims and needs. Our first aim is, therefore, to gain comprehensive insights into the specific developmental aims physicians prioritise by examining the coaching goals they set at the beginning of coaching. Since physicians face distinct roles as they advance in their careers, our second aim is to highlight similarities and differences in developmental aims and needs among individuals at various medical career stages. DESIGN: We conducted a qualitative analysis of 2571 coaching goals. We performed an inductive thematic analysis to code one-half of coaching goals and a codebook thematic analysis for the other half. Our interpretation of the findings was grounded in a critical realist approach. SETTING: Sixteen hospitals in the Netherlands. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 341 medical clerkship students, 336 medical residents, 122 early-career specialists, 82 mid-career specialists and 57 late-career specialists provided their coaching goals at the start of coaching. RESULTS: The findings revealed that coachees commonly set goals about their career and future, current job and tasks, interpersonal work relations, self-insight and development, health and well-being, nonwork aspects and the coaching process. Furthermore, the findings illustrate how the diversity of coaching goals increases as physicians advance in their careers. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings underscore the significance of recognising distinct challenges at various career stages and the necessity for tailoring holistic support for physicians. This insight holds great relevance for healthcare organisations, enabling them to better align system interventions with physicians' needs and enhance support. Moreover, our classification of coaching goals serves as a valuable foundation for future research, facilitating a deeper exploration of how these goals influence coaching outcomes.

Job search and employment success: A quantitative review and future research agenda.

Job search is an important activity that people engage in during various phases across the life span (e.g., school-to-work transition, job loss, job change, career transition). Based on our definition of job search as a goal-directed, motivational, and self-regulatory process, we present a framework to organize the multitude of variables examined in the literature on job seeking and employment success. We conducted a quantitative synthesis of the literature to test relationships between job-search self-regulation, job-search behavior, and employment success outcomes. We also quantitatively review key antecedents (i.e., personality, attitudinal factors, and contextual variables) of job-search self-regulation, job-search behavior, and employment success. We included studies that examined relationships with job-search or employment success variables among job seekers (e.g., new labor market entrants, unemployed individuals, employed individuals), resulting in 378 independent samples (N = 165,933). Most samples (74.3%, k = 281) came from articles published in 2001 or later. Findings from our meta-analyses support the role of job-search intensity in predicting quantitative employment success outcomes (i.e., rc = .23 for number of interviews, rc = .14 for number of job offers, and rc = .19 for employment status). Overall job-search intensity failed to predict employment quality. Our findings identify job-search self-regulation and job-search quality as promising constructs for future research, as these predicted both quantitative employment success outcomes and employment quality. Based on the results of the theoretical and quantitative synthesis, we map out an agenda for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Testing a Self-Compassion Intervention Among Job Seekers: Self-Compassion Beneficially Impacts Affect Through Reduced Self-Criticism.

Job search is associated with various obstacles and difficulties that can elicit negative emotions and undermine positive emotions. Having self-compassion may benefit job seekers' well-being by stimulating more balanced emotional responses to negative job search experiences. In an intervention study we examined whether state self-compassion can be increased among job seekers through writing exercises in which job seekers are instructed to reflect with self-compassion on their negative job search experiences. We further examined whether the self-compassion intervention benefited job seekers' affective responses, through reducing self-criticism. We designed a between-participants field experiment with two conditions (i.e., self-compassion vs. control) and three measurement times 1 week apart: a baseline questionnaire, the intervention with a second questionnaire, and a follow-up questionnaire (N = 180). Results show that the self-compassion writing exercise increased job seekers' state self-compassion, which in turn related to their affective responses to job search. Specifically, their negative deactivating affect (e.g., sadness) was lower and their positive deactivating affect (e.g., calmness) was higher immediately after the self-compassion writing exercise than after reflecting freely (i.e., the control condition). The effects on job seekers' affect were partially mediated by reduced self-criticism.

How strong is my safety net? Perceived unemployment insurance generosity and implications for job search, mental health, and reemployment.

While social science has substantially documented the individual experience of unemployment, less is known about the role of contextual variables. One contextual factor that is important for unemployed job seekers is the unemployment insurance (UI) that they receive. This study examines the relationships between job seeker perceptions of UI generosity and mental health during unemployment, reemployment speed, and reemployment quality. Drawing upon psychological construal theory, we conceptualize UI generosity as creating psychological distance from the reemployment goal, generating consequences for the job search, mental health, and reemployment. We tested our hypotheses with a four-wave survey design of job seekers looking for work in 3 different countries (United States, Germany, and the Netherlands). Perceived UI generosity was associated with slower reemployment speed, via reduced time pressure, job search priority, and job search metacognition. Perceived UI generosity was related to higher mental health, via reduced time pressure and financial strain. Finally, perceived UI generosity was related to increased reemployment quality, both directly as well as indirectly through lower time pressure and financial strain, and subsequent higher mental health. Our findings provide previously unavailable empirical insight into the mechanisms explaining the positive and negative outcomes of UI generosity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

When Teams Fail to Self-Regulate: Predictors and Outcomes of Team Procrastination Among Debating Teams.

Models of team development have indicated that teams typically engage in task delay during the first stages of the team's life cycle. An important question is to what extent this equally applies to all teams, or whether there is variation across teams in the amount of task delay. The present study introduces the concept of team procrastination as a lens through which we can examine whether teams collectively engage in unplanned, voluntary, and irrational delay of team tasks. Based on theory and research on self-regulation, team processes, and team motivation we developed a conceptual multilevel model of predictors and outcomes of team procrastination. In a sample of 209 student debating teams, we investigated whether and why teams engage in collective procrastination as a team, and what consequences team procrastination has in terms of team member well-being and team performance. The results supported the existence of team procrastination as a team-level construct that has some stability over time. The teams' composition in terms of individual-level trait procrastination, as well as the teams' motivational states (i.e., team learning goal orientation, team performance-approach goal orientation in interaction with team efficacy) predicted team procrastination. Team procrastination related positively to team members' stress levels, especially for those low on trait procrastination. Furthermore, team procrastination had an indirect negative relationship with team performance, through teams' collective stress levels. These findings add to the theoretical understanding of self-regulatory processes of teams, and highlight the practical importance of paying attention to team-level states and processes such as team goal orientation and team procrastination.

The state of boredom: Frustrating or depressing?

Boredom is a prevalent emotion with potential negative consequences. Previous research has associated boredom with outcomes indicating both high and low levels of arousal and activation. In the present study we propose that the situational context is an important factor that may determine whether boredom relates to high versus low arousal/activation reactions. In a correlational (N = 443) and an experimental study (N = 120) we focused on the situational factor (perceived) task autonomy, and examined whether it explains when boredom is associated with high versus low arousal affective reactions (i.e., frustration versus depressed affect). Results of both studies indicate that when task autonomy is low, state boredom relates to more frustration than when task autonomy is high. In contrast, some support (i.e., Study 1 only) was found suggesting that when task autonomy is high, state boredom relates to more depressed affect than when task autonomy is low. These findings imply that careful attention is needed for tasks that are relatively boring. In order to reduce frustration caused by such tasks, substantial autonomy should be provided, while monitoring that this does not result in increased depressed affect.

Behind the wheel: What drives the effects of error handling?

Existing research comparing error management (a strategy focusing on increasing the positive and decreasing the negative consequences of errors) to error prevention (a strategy focusing on working faultlessly), has identified error management as beneficial for multiple outcomes. Yet, due to various methodological limitations, it is unclear whether the effects previously found are due to error prevention, error management, or both. We examine this in an experimental study with a 2 (error prevention: yes vs. no) × 2 (error management: yes vs. no) factorial design. Error prevention had negative effects on cognition and adaptive transfer performance. Error management alleviated worry and boosted one's perceived self-efficacy. Overall, the results show that error prevention and error management have unique outcomes on negative affect, self-efficacy, cognition, and performance.

Motivating and hindering factors during the reemployment process: the added value of employment counselors' assessment.

Because unemployment negatively affects people's well-being, it is of crucial importance that unemployed individuals move back to work. The process of getting reemployed, however, is difficult and complex. Therefore, many unemployed job seekers are assisted by employment counselors. The present study focuses on motivating and hindering factors in the reemployment process, examining the added value of the counselors' assessment of job seekers' attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors. The results of a 3-wave study with job seeker self-ratings and counselor-ratings indicated that perceived health problems is the most consistent predictor of job search and reemployment status. The findings further provide some convergent validity evidence for self- and counselor-rated situational-level motivators (i.e., attitude, social pressure, self-efficacy) and job search intensity. Although method effects did not seem to threaten the validity of the prediction of job search intensity and procrastination, employment counselors' assessments of job seekers' job search intensity and procrastination were significantly more strongly related to reemployment success than job seekers' self-ratings. Future research should therefore include other-reports, in addition to job seeker self-reports, to get a more complete view of people's job search behavior. Also reemployment counseling firms may want to use the expert knowledge of their employment counselors more systematically.

Boredom at work: proximal and distal consequences of affective work-related boredom.

Boredom is an emotion that occurs regularly at the workplace, with negative consequences for the employee and the organization. It is therefore important to understand why work-related boredom leads to such adverse consequences and what can be done to mitigate its occurrence and its negative consequences. In the present study we proposed a model suggesting that feelings of boredom at work induce immediate affect-based bored behaviors, and that such bored behavior leads to depressive complaints, distress, and counterproductive work behavior. We further posed that job crafting can mitigate work-related boredom and its negative outcomes. Results of a survey study among 189 employees showed that work-related boredom and bored behavior are empirically distinct, though related, constructs. Work-related boredom was positively related to depressive complaints, distress, and counterproductive work behavior, and these associations were fully mediated by bored behavior. Job crafting related negatively to work-related boredom, and attenuated the relationship of work-related boredom with bored behavior. Moreover, the indirect effects of work-related boredom through bored behavior on its outcomes were smaller the more employees engaged in job crafting. This research enhances insight into work-related boredom by showing that boredom as an affective state can be distinguished from its proximal behavioral consequences, and by providing a first onset to obtain insight in moderating and mediating mechanisms that may explain work-related boredom's consequences. It highlights the importance of employees' opportunities to work in jobs that do not cause work-related boredom to develop, and the role of job crafting as a potential intervention tool.

Intentional response distortion on personality tests: using eye-tracking to understand response processes when faking.

Intentional response distortion or faking among job applicants completing measures such as personality and integrity tests is a concern in personnel selection. The present study aimed to investigate whether eye-tracking technology can improve our understanding of the response process when faking. In an experimental within-participants design, a Big Five personality test and an integrity measure were administered to 129 university students in 2 conditions: a respond honestly and a faking good instruction. Item responses, response latencies, and eye movements were measured. Results demonstrated that all personality dimensions were fakeable. In support of the theoretical position that faking involves a less cognitively demanding process than responding honestly, we found that response times were on average 0.25 s lower and participants had less eye fixations in the fake good condition [corrected]. However, in the fake good condition, participants had more fixations on the 2 extreme response options of the 5-point answering scale, and they fixated on these more directly after having read the question. These findings support the idea that faking leads to semantic rather than self-referenced item interpretations. Eye-tracking was demonstrated to be potentially useful in detecting faking behavior, improving detecting rates over and beyond response extremity and latency metrics.

The effects of goal orientation on job search and reemployment: a field experiment among unemployed job seekers.

Because unemployment has detrimental effects on the well-being of unemployed people, it is important that unemployed individuals move back to work. The present study aimed at improving the understanding of the job search and reemployment process by applying goal orientation theory to job seeking. Using a 3-group field experimental design among 109 unemployed job seekers, the authors examined the effects of situational learning and performance goal orientation on participants' job search intentions, job search behavior, and reemployment status. A situational focus on learning goals was found to be beneficial for the job search process, leading to more search intentions, more search behavior, and higher reemployment probabilities. These effects seemed to be independent of people's dispositional goal orientation. Findings indicate that goal orientation is a promising construct for both science and practice in the field of job seeking.