News

EAWOP Conference 2019 @ Turin, Italy

The bi-annual conference of the European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology (EAWOP) was held in Turin, Italy this year. Almost 2.000 people attended the conference, showing that it continues to grow. At any time, there were 20 parallel sessions. A great sign in terms of growth of the topics and the field, but also a difficult schedule in terms of making choices to attend sessions!

June 4, 2019

Keynote at International Talent Event Amsterdam

On Wednesday May 15th 2019 I had the honor of providing the opening keynote of the 2019 International Talent Event Amsterdam, which was hosted at the Student Hotel in Amsterdam. We talked about the importance of finding a good fit between your skills and ambitions on the one hand, and the job and organization you search for on the other hand. It is not just about finding "a job" but about a job that provides learning opportunities and meaningful activities.

May 22, 2019

Interview "Disrupt Your Career"

As part of their work on career disruptions, I was interviewed by Claire Harbour-Lyell and Antoine Tirard about how I decided to start studying careers and doing academic research and teaching.

May 4, 2019

New paper: Should employers invest in employability?

Should employers invest in the employability of their workers? It's a discussion I often have with managers and professionals. What typically happens, is that we talk about to so-called employability management paradox: yes, there is a need to invest but... won't they then leave the company for a competitor once they are more employable? In this study that I published with Maria Tims, Susanne Beijer, and Nele De Cuyper, we provide empirical evidence that this paradox might not exist.

April 16, 2019

Keynote at the Briding Success Event

On Tuesday March 12th I had the pleasure of providing a keynote in Het Concert Gebouw in Amsterdam during the Bridging Success event.

April 1, 2019

New paper: Buffering the psychological contract breach

We just published a new paper about psychological contract breach in the open access journal Frontiers in Psychology. In this study, we examined whether a high level of commitment in one's unit/team might act as a buffer when psychological contract breach occurs. We found support for our expectations: psychological contract breach can diminish work engagement and subsequently increase intentions to leave the organization. However, when the unit/team members are all highly committed to the organization (that is: when commitment climate level and strength are both high) this effect became less strong. In other words: a highly committed team can buffer the psychological contract breach.

March 12, 2019

New Paper: Building a Sustainable Start

Our paper entitled "Building a sustainable start: The role of career competencies, career success, and career shocks in young professionals' employability" has just been published online in the Journal of Vocational Behavior. This is the first paper of Rowena Blokker's PhD thesis, which makes it an extra special publication for our team!

March 6, 2019

Top Cited Paper in Applied Psychology Journal

We received the great news that our paper "Crafting your Career: How Career Competencies Relate to Career Success via Job Crafting" is among the top cited papers in Applied Psychology: An International Review between January 2017 and December 2018. Prior to this, the paper was also among the most downloaded paper in the same timespan, indicating that many people are reading and citing our work.

February 26, 2019

Keynote Talk at Young FrieslandCampina

On Friday January 25th 2019 I gave a keynote for a group of young professionals from FrieslandCampina. The title of the talk was "Why you should NOT strive to be successful in your career".

February 24, 2019

Hosting the VU Education Day 2019

On Monday February 11th 2019, I co-hosted the annual Education Day of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

February 24, 2019

NPO Radio 1 Interview about Video Selection

On Thursday January 10th 2019 I was invited to join a discussion about videos in selection during the radio program "This was the Day" [Dit was de Dag] on NPO Radio 1.

January 21, 2019

Keynote about Sustainable Employability @ ZuivelNL

Sustainable employability: another hype or a crucial theme? This is what we discussed during the sustainable employability day of ZuivelNL, which consists of representatives from various Dutch companies in the dairy industry.

November 16, 2018

Keynote at Employability21 Conference

During the second Employability21 conference on September 13th and 14th 2018 in Leuven, Belgium, I provided a keynote talk about sustainable career management.

September 30, 2018

A Look Back at AOM 2018

The Academy of Management 2018 conference ended two weeks ago and it was again one of the highlights of the year. Five super intense days that left me pretty exhausted by Tuesday evening but also provided so many new ideas, productive meetings, and highly meaningful interactions and sessions. Below, I will reflect on my most important experiences during the conference.

August 27, 2018

Best Paper Award for "#Trending Topics in Careers" Paper

I am very honored and proud to have been awarded an Emerald Literati Outstanding Paper Award for the Career Development International Best Paper 2017. Our review of recent career research, entitled "#Trending Topics in Careers: A Review and Future Research Agenda", was chosen as the most influential and impactful paper in CDI in 2017. The paper has already been downloaded over 1.100 times since it was published in October 2017!

July 9, 2018

EAWOP Small Group Meeting: New Frontiers in Employability Research

On Thursday June 28th and Friday June 29th, I participated in a small group meeting on employability, organized at Technical University Eindhoven, Netherlands, and hosted by Pascale Le Blanc and Beatrice van der Heijden.

July 1, 2018

Elected for the Leadership Track of the Academy of Management Careers Division

I have been elected in the leadership track of the Academy of Management Careers Division, meaning that for the next 5 years I will serve in various leadership roles for the division, including PDW chair, program chair, and division chair.

June 7, 2018

Research Grant for Psychology of Flexible Work

A team of VU researchers, led by Sanne Nijs and myself and in cooperation with Paul Jansen, Svetlana Khapova and Bert Breij, have received a research grant from Instituut Gak to have a 4-year full-time PhD project on the psychology of flexible work.

May 24, 2018

Career crafting paper among top downloaded papers in Applied Psychology 2016-2017

The paper "Crafting your Career: How Career Competencies Relate to Career Success via Job Crafting", that I published last year with Maria Tims, was among the top downloaded paper in Applied Psychology: An International Review.

May 23, 2018

New Paper: Tales of the Unexpected - Integrating Career Shocks in the Contemporary Careers Literature

Our conceptual paper about the role of career shocks in contemporary career development is out now, published open access in the SA Journal of Industrial Psychology.

April 19, 2018

Call for Papers: Special Issue on Career Shocks in Career Development International

Call for papers: Special issue in Career Development International about career shocks

April 3, 2018

New PhD Candidates Incoming @ SBE

A team of career scholars from the VU School of Business and Economics - Prof. Dr. Svetlana Khapova, Niki Konijn, Dr. Jos Akkermans, Dr. Evgenia Lysova will start supervising two new PhD candidates at VU Amsterdam about international careers and expatriation.

November 2, 2017

BNR Newsradio on Challenges during Early Careers

On Tuesday November 14th 2017 I was part of the radio programme "Werkzoekers" (work seekers) of BNR Business Radio. The discussion focused on common pitfalls that young individual may face during their early careers. The broadcast can be listed to (in Dutch) HERE.

November 18, 2017

Media Attention for Career LEAP Program

On Thursday November 9th 2017, we had the official launch of the second part of the Career LEAP program. I am working on this project together with Carmel O'Sullivan (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) and Jennifer Symonds (University College Dublin, Ireland), and the main aim is to help prepare young unemployed (NEET) individuals for a future job and career.

November 18, 2017

BNR Newsradio on Proactive Work Behavior

On Tuesday January 30th 2018 I was part of the radio show "Werkverkenners" (work explorers) of BNR Newsradio, where we talked about proactive work behavior.

January 30, 2018

Research Visit @ King's College London

Last week, I was at King's College London for a 1-week research visit at their KCL Business School.

February 19, 2018

Academy of Management 2018: Here I Come!

Academy of Management just officially sent the decisions about submitted papers and symposiums. It gave us a lot of good news: 3 accepted symposiums and 2 accepted PDW sessions. Of the symposiums, two have been accepted as showcase symposium, which makes us even more proud and happy. Chicago: here we come!

March 28, 2018

Joining the JVB Editorial Board

Starting 2018, I have officially joined the editorial board of Journal of Vocational Behavior.

January 16, 2018

PhD Defense Inge de Clippeleer

On Wednesday October 25th 2017, Inge de Clippeleer defende her PhD thesis entitled: "Being in the driver's seat of your job: Investigating determinants, mechanisms and outcomes of job crafting and team crafting", at Ghent University, Belgium. I was part of her supervisory committee and also of the jury. Inge first presented the highlights of her PhD thesis in very engaging fashion and in understandable terms for the audience. Then, she did a fantastic job answering the questions from the jury members. A well deserved success and now officially "Dr. Inge"!

October 27, 2017

Lecture "Universiteit van Nederland" about Finding Your First Job

My lecture at the Universiteit van Nederland is now online! During this lecture, I talked about strategies of finding your first job, discussing questions such as: "How can I find my first job?" and "How can I make sure I remain engaged after obtaining the first job?". Some of the topics I discussed included employability and career competencies.

October 27, 2017

New Paper Published: #Trending Topics in Careers - A Review and Future Research Agenda

We just published our review paper "#Trending topics in careers: A review and future research agenda" in Career Development International. In this study, we reviewed all 693 published papers in Career Development International, Career Development Quarterly, Journal of Career Assessment, and Journal of Career Development between 2012-2016. In doing so, we formulated the topics that were most popular in these journals, which we called "trending topics". For each of the 16 trending topics that we found, we provide a brief description, some statistics on their publication frequence and potential differences between the journals, and some suggestions for future research on each of these topics.

October 13, 2017

PhD Defense Maxim Kovalenko

On Friday September 29th 2017, Maxim Kovalenko defended his PhD thesis at the University of Antwerp. Maxim has written a very interesting thesis in which he aims to build bridges between Sociology and careers research, thereby examining both micro and macro factors of career development. Among other things, Maxim discovered several patterns of career development over a long period of time, thereby showing that the transitional career pattern, which is characterized by flexibility and job transitions - already existed well before careers researchers started writing about this in the 1990s. Maxim was also critical of the neo-liberal perspective of individual agency and responsibility, noting that there might a possible "Matthew effect" in which the highly skilled profit from agency and become successful, whereas disadvantaged people may become even more disadvantaged because the added pressure of having to manage their own careers might be too much of a burden.

September 30, 2017