The Specificity of the Career Prospects of Persons Who Find Themselves in a Situation of Unemployment

The article provides psychological understanding of the definition of “career prospects” and presents the results of a theoretical and empirical study of structural components of the career prospects of the unemployed. The carried out study revealed the following main structural components of career prospects of the person: cognitive (mental representations of professional career); affective (the system of relations in the career planning process), behavioral (multidirectional actions to achieve career development); motivational (motives of professional career), value (value guidelines of professional career). The paper presents a model of career prospects. The degree of formation of structural components of this model is the main criterion of its development/presence. The analysis of the respondents' representations of career prospects made it possible to distinguish four basic types of prospects: fully formed, partially formed, insufficiently formed, and unformed ones. To achieve the objectives of the present study the authors developed a questionnaire aimed at studying the structural components of career prospects. The authors carried out the correlation analysis of the components of the career prospects of the unemployed and drew a conclusion about specific features of career prospects of the unemployed as one of the processes related to career planning. The study revealed that the career prospects of the unemployed relates to the implementation of individual values of the maintenance of health, communication, and love. The unemployed planned their career prospects for a relatively near time period. The insufficiently formed and unformed career prospects, which were based on the motivation to avoid failure and orientation on the past and the abovementioned values, were dominant in the unemployed. Only 4 % of the unemployed had the formed career perspects.