CAREER CHOICES OF GEN Z AND GEN Y.2: IDENTIFYING THE KEY DIFFERENCES RELATED TO PARENTAL INFLUENCE

Abstract

The aim of the study was to identify and confirm the factors for two generations namely GEN Z and GEN Y.2 which they perceive to be important for career choice. Data was collected from 466 respondents of GEN Z and 446 respondents of GEN Y.2 which were used to examine psychometric properties of the identified factors. PCA was used to initially determine the factors for both the generations using SPSS.21. The identified factors were confirmed using PLS 3. For GEN Z Freedom of choice, parental achievements, parental aspirations, parental educational qualifications & awareness and lastly parental support were the confirmed factors. For GEN Y.2 the confirmed factors were parental aspirations, parental support, parental education & awareness, parental achievement & motivation and finally parental occupation. Confirmed factors for both the generations revealed acceptable internal reliability, and convergent validity. In addition to this the study also highlights the key differences among the identified factors for the two generations. The present study reveals that the GEN Z gave more importance to freedom of choice and GEN Y.2 gave more importance to parental aspirations. Thus, the present study provides insights for parents to understand how their role is changing when it comes to managing the career choice of their adolescents. The results also highlights that parents need to be more thoughtful, alert and adaptive with changing times while providing interventions to their adolescents when they are making a career choice.