Webinar Transcript: CCWT Special Guest Carmella Ocampo

New Webinar Series on Internship Research in 2020

Wednesday, August 5, 2020
3pm CST

Special Guest: Carmella Ocampo (Australian National University)
The Role of Internship Participation and Conscientiousness in Developing Career Adaptability: A Five-Wave Growth Mixture Model Analysis


>> Zi Chen: Good afternoon everybody, thank you so much for joining us on this week’s webinar form the Center for College and Workforce Transition at UW-Madison. My name is Zi Chen, I’m a researcher at CCWT. Today we’re honored and so excited to have our guest Carmella Ocampo from Australian National University. We’re going to talk about her research on career adaptability, which is a critical topic especially in today’s unpredictable labor market and ever-changing work environment. And today we have Carmella Ocampo, I’ll just read a brief bio of hers:

“I’m a Ph.D. candidate in Organizational Behavior in the Research School of Management at the Australian National University. At the broad level, career studies how personality creates emotional abilities and a social context support or stifle individual goal pursuit effort in the context of the work and careers. And today we’ll be talking about Carmella’s most recent paper came out in the March 2020 this year, the title is The Role of Internship Participation and Conscientiousness in Developing Career Adaptability, which is a five waves mixture model analysis.”

All right, so without further ado, welcome to join us today, Carmella.

>> Carmella Ocampo: Hello, thank you for inviting me, I would have loved to see you all in person in Wisconsin in Madison, but for now this will do and I’m very happy to be part of this webinar series.

>> Zi Chen: And would you like to introduce yourself more, you might do a better job than me.

>> Carmella Ocampo: I think you’ve done well, yeah. So, as what you said I’m a Ph.D. candidate in Management here in Australia. So, my research looks at personality characteristics, for example career adaptability, perfectionism, and emotional abilities like our capacity to adequately express or suppress our emotions. And the role of social contexts, which looks at our social economic status, for instance all blend together to explain career development in our success in our goal achievement efforts. So, I look at how all these factors shape leader emergence, who becomes a leader, who becomes a supervisor or successful person in the field and how that will impact performance of that individual as well as the people who work with him or her. And also, upward social mobility, how do we move to one social round to the next, so that’s the focus, that has been a focus of my research. And this particular paper that we’re going to be discussing kind of looks at how we navigate challenges and opportunities and even unpredictable changes in our career and development.

>> Zi Chen: Yeah, that’s great. So, let’s talk about your research. Why did you get interested in studying the relationship between the internship participation and the career adaptability? And I think it might be helpful for you to introduce career adaptability a little bit just to give more background information to this group.

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah, so thank you. Well interestingly, this is the first paper that I worked on when I started my Ph.D., so I worked on this in 2017 and a lot of things have happened along the way because it was published in March. But part of my research program investigates career development, so I study work experience, work opportunities, and the relationship between careers in other aspects of life if I may say that. So, for example I study how careers facilitate and constrain family functioning and how our family experiences shape our career choices. So, what we experience at home or what we see our parents do or our grandparents do and how that will impact our careers later on. And within this umbrella, I look at how people’s life cycle interactions with work or by that I mean how people navigate demands and opportunities that are salient at various stages of their career or life. So, given this overarching research program on career adaptability, I look at how internship serves as a learning experience to enable students or individuals develop or build career adaptability.

But what is career adaptability? It’s our ability or our readiness to cope with unpredictable and predictable demands and events within our working environment. So, what’s happening at work for example, how do we navigate that, and what sort of resources do we have within ourselves and within the environment can allow us to address the issue we face in our work. So, career adaptability consists of four resources or dimensions if I may call it. So, we call it the four C’s in career research. First in career concern, so this involves our capacity for career planning like for example, individuals I’m sure when we’re growing up, we ask ourselves what do I want to do with my life. And given what I want to do with my life, what steps should I take to achieve that. So that’s the first C, career concern. The second C is career control, so it’s our ability or our confidence to implement career-relevant decisions. For example, we ask ourselves what am I willing to do for my career, what decisions do I have to make for my career? For example, is my career choice really my actual choice, or is it somebody else’s choices.

The third C is called career curiosity. So, this involves our willingness to understand the fit between our skills, our interest in the work environment, so for example we ask ourselves given the career that I want and the skills involved in that particular career, do I have what it takes, do I have the appropriate training, do I have the appropriate interest or skill to persist or even excel in that career. And lastly, we have the fourth C, which is confidence. So, this involved our ability to execute actions to obtain our career goals, like for example how it involves our belief in our ability to excel in achieving our goals. Like how much do we believe in ourselves when we are in the process of achieving our goals. So, all these forms as we say would allow us to kind of cope with the demands and the challenges imposed within the work environment, yeah.

>> Zi Chen: Yeah, thank you so much and also I just want to follow up with a question of why you think career adaptability is an important thing for young people to have, especially we see a lot of evidence in the literature talking about the relationship between having career adaptability and student outcomes.

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah, and I think I’d like to extend that question, but it’s not just important for students and for young people in the school-to-work transition context. Like what we’ve done in this research area is that career adaptability is very important, and it extends up until late adulthood and middle adulthood during the mid-career stage of their life. It’s important because as we progress in the career timeline, we encounter a lot of challenges, both unexpected, expected, we anticipate these challenges. And to address these challenges and issues, we have to rely on ourselves and the different competencies and the skills that we have built along the way to cope with these challenges and to thrive in the working environment. So, we need this not only to succeed, but to apply ourselves fully in the work environment.

>> Zi Chen: Yeah, that’s awesome. And like for this specific study you focus on students in the transition from college to work, right? Could you talk more about your research context on the sample and the method.

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah, so well the main question that we’re trying to address in this paper is how internship plays a role or plays a part in developing career adaptability. I’m sure when we were younger, we think of internship as just a checklist, that okay I have to do this in order for me to graduate. But I’d like to think there’s more to the internship experience than that. This is a chance for young people to kind of see what the work environment is like, especially for those people who never really worked during the time that they were studying. Yeah, so we want to see whether concern, control, curiosity, or confidence would change or would increase as we participate in these internship programs. And we also asked when we were developing this research, we also asked what’s the role of personality in the development of career adaptability, because we think that individuals with certain personality traits are more likely to optimize the benefits that are available within the internship experience. So, we think that individuals who are conscientious, those who are planful, dutiful for example, are more like to benefit from the opportunities and the experiences within the internship program.

Yeah, so to address these questions, we sampled about 170 undergraduate students who are enrolled in hospitality tourism management programs in a large university in China. I think there were about at that time during data collection there were about 50 participants or students who signed up for an internship. So, in this particular study, students had the choice during that semester to sign up or not. And at that point only about 50 students signed up for the internship program and they have to work in a five-star hotel for two months and they were involved in different facets of the hotel management program. Like they were in the front desk for example, they were involved in housekeeping services, food and beverage service. And all the remaining participants were still students at the program but at the time they did not sign up for the internship. And the way we did this is because we want to see how internship supports the growth of the career adaptability dimensions, how it builds career adaptability.

So, we surveyed the participants at five measurement periods, so we survey the participants two months before the start of the internship, just to have a feel of their levels of career adaptability. And then we surveyed them I think two weeks before the internship participation or the start of the internship, and then during the internship there were logistical constraints in the data collection so were not able to collect data about their career adaptability during the internship. But then, we were able to collect data on their internship experience and career adaptability development one week after the internship program, two months after the internship program, and five months after the internship program. So, it’s like five measurement study, pre-tests and delay process of how internship helped them develop their career adaptability.

>> Zi Chen: Yeah, thank you so much, it’s just so impressive to me to see you being able to collect the five waves of the data and do such a cool study. And I just want to ask what did you find of whether or not the career adaptability actually grow across time?

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah. So, well what’s interesting is that at the beginning both participants in the intern group, those who participated in the internship program, and those who did not participate in the internship program have the same levels of career adaptability. So, there’s no significant difference between their levels of career adaptability. However, after the internship participation, we found that for interns, there was some growth in career adaptability for all the dimensions basically, for concern, control, curiosity, and confidence across time. So, internship we found helped develop or build career adaptability for interns. However, I think for the non-interns, I think what increased at that time was career curiosity, but not all the dimensions of career adaptability. And we actually have a qualitative data on this as well, like just to enquire what happened in the process just to get a feel or a qualitative understanding of what developed and what did not develop and what happened like in their current life at that time.

So, we found that there was a significant increase in curiosity I think for non-interns because at that time they were doing their thesis and they were worried about what the work life is like because they didn’t have any sort of exposure into the world of work. So, there was a spike in curiosity. Yeah, but and also found like relating to the personality factor, we found that conscientiousness did not really moderate or did not increase the development of career adaptability for interns. So, in other words, conscientiousness did not really account for the increase or decrease in career adaptability. However, what’s interesting to point out is that for highly conscientious interns, they have higher levels of curiosity than highly conscientious non-interns. So, maybe that’s why they signed up for the internship program, because they’re already curious to begin with. And it’s also interesting to point that highly conscientious non-interns had higher levels of career confidence than highly conscientious interns. So, what does that mean? So maybe they’re already very confident in the world of work or how work is going to be like, that’s why they didn’t even bother signing up for the internship.

Yeah, so those are the things we found so basically to summarize it all, internship promotes growth in the development of career adaptability result resources over time. And that while we did not find any moderating effects for the role of conscientiousness, we found different steps in the development of certain things or resources within the career adaptability domain.

>> Zi Chen: Yeah, right thank you so much for the explanation, it was really helpful. And I think it’s great to hear that career adaptability went through continuous roles. I just want to follow up a question about the speed of the development, is that something that went slower or faster in terms of like the growth.

>> Carmella Ocampo: Well, actually what we found is that the development of all these career adaptability resources were all in harmony, like nothing was really ever, the growth was not really faster or slower for some other resources. But given that these individuals are in the school-to-work transition phase, the concern is much higher, is much greater because they’re at that point where they kind of don’t know what they’re going to be doing, where they’re going to be going, for example. And we also found that confidence may tend to be lower for example, because I’m sure when we were undergrads, there’s a lot of anxiety involved in the process of looking for work. But what we found is that internship kind of helps increase that confidence or that ability or that curiosity and ability to kind of navigate the work situation.

But I think in the career adaptability literature, in some cases or events or challenges for example, some career adaptability resources would be stronger than the others or would be more salient than the other resources. So, for example, if you’re in the job market maybe concern will be much greater at this point or if you’re already settling in your career maybe curiosity or control might be more salient at that point. So, I think that’s an area that we can further explore, but that’s what I’m seeing just based on the trends of our findings as well as of other people’s findings.

>> Zi Chen: Thank you. So, I have another question about the conscientiousness. So, although you guys did not identify some statistically significant role of this personality trait, so I was just wondering do you have any thoughts of other possible personality traits that may play a role in this kind of link?

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah, you know I’ve been thinking about that and I was a bit gutted that conscientiousness did not play a role in that part. But outside of the big five, yeah so definitely other important characteristics would be agreeableness. For example, our openness experience might be an important interesting personality characteristic that might play a role. Like some people for example or conscientious people might just be like on the dot you know, they just want to follow through on what they play to do. But career is very unpredictable, especially now. And I think at this time, all the more that we have to be open to different possibilities, to be open to different opportunities and where is takes us. So, I wonder whether openness experience to various types of experience could help support the development or career adaptability over time. And yeah, definitely self-advocacy for example, our ability to set plans and to follow through might also play a role in that.

>> Zi Chen: Yeah, and also when I read your study, I just feel like it’s really important to consider both the contextual factors and internal factors. So, which may interplay with each other to achieve an outcome for individuals.

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah, that’s right. After all career adaptability is developed not only through our personal characteristics or what we’ve experienced or what we think or want for ourselves, but it involves a harmonious interplay between our environment, the need of our environment and our personal needs as well. So, I think career is more dynamic, or career adaptability if I may say is more dynamic because it involves constant revision of our career plans and revision of our career challenges as well taking that into account and figuring out how to address these things.

>> Zi Chen: Right. I think this leads to my next question perfectly. I just want to talk about the implications of your study. So, what would you suggest people to apply career adaptability into their work or research?

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah, actually career adaptability is a very ripe topic right now, especially in management and especially given what’s going on with the world right now. Like more than ever, all the more that we have to be adaptable because I feel like given what’s happening right now, I feel like the world is in a startup mode, we are kind of figuring out how to do things and somehow just have to rely on how the world is changing in front of us and our ability to understand it and formulate the next steps to navigate it. But at the same time, we also have to rely on the resources that we’ve already built for ourselves as a means to perceive or to deal with a situation.

So, I think career adaptability will all the more be relevant in today’s environment, like what kind of skills or what kind of abilities are needs to thrive and to remain relevant in this work environment. And beyond being able to perform the necessary jobs available, who are the people that are kind of likely to thrive and to preserve that level of well-being that will allow us to be satisfied with our jobs, be happy with our careers as well, and to be successful in our work. So, I would capitalize on what the current situation offers us and apply career adaptability so we can look at students, for instance we can look at individuals at various stages of their careers.

>> Zi Chen: Yeah, and also so in your paper, I think you focus on internship participation. I’m just wondering if you consider other factors of internship, like the quality of the program intervention. So, like for people who design and implement or in that process of internship program, like design the implication process, working with students and interns, what are some suggestions for them?

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah, so I think that question kind of touches on the limitations of our work, because we never really looked at the quality of the internship experience and how students kind of evaluate the quality of their internship experience. Because I’m sure it would vary from one student or to the other. But I think another interesting thing is to look at the role of internship supervisors in the quality of the internship experience. I remember the students here is our sample, they have an internship supervisor within the university, and they have also an internship, an on-site internship supervisor. And the idea is that the internship supervisor within the university and the on-site internship supervisor will provide support, help guide the students to actually optimize the internship experience. So, if they have questions about what they’re doing, if they experience some sort of problems, or if there are things that they need to clarify, they can either ideally go to their university intern supervisor and their on-site internship supervisor. Just for us or for them to better marry the work which is the internship and the university for example principles and just join them together and formulate their understanding of careers.

But I think that’s one thing that they can look at the role of these support systems and structures within the internship program to see how the quality of the internship experience would predict career adaptability development. And other things would be the task that they’re doing, some tasks they might find boring or unnecessary or that they already know other tasks are harder compared to others. So, I want to see how that variation in the task assigned to them would impact their experience of the internship and how that impacts the development of their career adaptability.

>> Zi Chen: Thank you, thank you so much for that great advice. And I’m just wondering what are your next steps to extend this study?

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah, to extend the study. Well, I think a lot can be done given what I talked about, but I would want to see, if I have the necessary funding and logistically if I can extend this, I want to do another follow-up on the interns and non-interns. How internship really kind of helped individuals who participated in the internship program and who chose not to participate in the internship program at that time. How does that impact their career success for example, how does that impact their career satisfaction, who persisted or who stayed in that particular career in hospitality and in the hotel industry given their internship experience? So, it would be interesting for me to do a follow-up a year later or two years later to see how internships really impacted their career adaptability development and their eventual career success in the long-term.

>> Zi Chen: Right, I just want to go back to the start of this conversation about the internship program itself. So, the sample you were working with, when they do internship how long are their internships? Is that a short period or longer period, like there are just so many different forms of internships.

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah, so I think for this one we looked at participants who did like a two-month full-time internship program in a hotel in China, so I think they’re working five to eight hours a day for two months at different assets of the hotel management work available.

>> Zi Chen: Right, and for me my personal interest, I would like to see students in other majors like beyond the hospitality in other majors and how things look like. And also look at different internship durations, I know there are something called micro internships on the market, some students are attending that for some results. So, I just want to see a more variety of this research based on your ideas which might be interesting.

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah, that’s true, like some fields would require a year of internship for example, there are different paths or different types of internship and definitely the type of internship would really help or explain the variation in career adaptability development. Yeah, so however for this particular study we focused on hotel and restaurant management students primarily because internship is so rampant in this particular industry. I think the program itself you have to have some sort of internship experience for you to get a job later on. So, I think as a first step what we did was to focus on that first and then what I mentioned a while ago, I would be so interested to see how internships shape their career, their work values for example, and their eventual career success. Yeah, and like other industries as well where internship is quite pretty big. I would love to see that really.

>> Zi Chen: Yeah, and also, I wonder in addition to career adaptability, what do you think needs to be studied in the world of internships, or what are some of your other interests?

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah, so well I want to see how internship, and well I think really personally and given my knowledge on the topic, I would be deeply interested to see how internship and the opportunities it offers. It provides a rich avenue for career sense making and career decision-making. I would want to see how internship influence career sense-making and career decision-making, like how does this experience allow us to kind of develop our understanding of ourselves in relation to our career and in relation to our work. And I would want to examine how internship experience impacts a person’s work ethic for instance, understanding of expectations at work for example, what we shouldn’t be doing, what we should be doing.

And also, our responsibilities as individuals or as workers, so I think an interesting research area that intern scholars like you could look at is how internship builds the working person, how this individual approaches work issues or challenges later on. I think also at the macro level, I would want to see how HR practitioners for example view individuals with or without any sort of internship experience. What can be done at the practical level to increase the value of internship opportunities for example for the individual and for the work itself.

>> Zi Chen: Yeah, that’s great. I just have one more question before we go to the Q/A session. So, my last question is how do you think the pandemic has affected internships? So I know in the U.S., a lot of internship positions has been phased or cancelled. For those who are taking internships in the summer, some of them reported losing the social part of their internship. So, I just wonder in your country or in general in this world based on your knowledge, what is the current situation or internship availabilities look like in your country? Or what is your understanding of this kind of effect of the pandemic?

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah, that’s very interesting and I think that’s a very important question because I feel like the pandemic has impacted directly or indirectly several aspects of our lives, especially at work. In the blink of an eye, a lot has changed in terms of work because of the pandemic, and it’s changed how we work, how we find work, and how we form and sustain relationships with other given what’s happening. But I’d like to highlight that this particular pandemic would delay job search strategies of individuals in school-to-work transition context. Like I know as what you said, given what’s happening all the internship positions are not available right now. So, this would mean that it will hamper the development of career competencies for a lot of young people. This will also hamper their ability to look for jobs that might be suitable for them or that they might want to have pre-pandemic times. So, if anything, this will delay several job search strategies and postpone the development of certain career competencies.

But on the other hand, if individuals could find some work or if they’re available work, or if there are just readily available opportunities for them to kind of build their career competency, then that would be good. So maybe what we can do from home is increase their ability to look for jobs virtually and to increase their ability to thrive in the current labor market, like their ability to conduct work remotely might be a skill now and later on. Their ability to produce high-quality work, even being away from a physical office or space would develop as well. And also tapping onto my research, we focused on individuals or on students in the hotel industry and we know that this industry is kind of struggling right now. So, I am also curious to see how young people in school-to-work transition context in this field will navigate the situation.

But on the upside, I think that within my country like Philippines, Australia, and even the U.S. we see that internship is also a big thing in the medical field. I think a lot of medical interns interned for several months or a year or even years, so I would be interested to see how medical students or medical interns try to marry what’s happening in their current experience right now. Because their perceptions of career and work, I know that the healthcare system is working at full capacity and given what’s happening I don’t know how this will shape the experience of medical interns right now, especially those in the front line. So, this might be an interesting thing to look at later on, whether this might stress them, the long-term and short-term impact of that. And overall because we’re still in the process of change, I don’t know how institutions, workplaces would view the importance or relevance of internship.

But I’d like to think that internship in any way is always beneficial for the person. Any form of experience is beneficial, well ideally, it’s guided, it’s supported and that individuals are given that reflective space to process what’s happened to understand what’s happened as to plan what could happen, I think that’s the most important benefit of internship and I think that’s what we need to focus on. Like practically and theoretically, now and in the future.

>> Zi Chen: Yeah, I totally hear you, there are so many things we could do as an individual, as an intern, and as supervisors and institution educators to make this better and to deliver better experiences for our interns. Because it’s a beneficial experience, right?

>> Carmella Ocampo: Right, and I think the success of an internship program the rely just on the structures will build around the internship experience, like we could impose so many rules and tasks for the students to complete. But at the end of the day, we have to look at several people working together to provide a good experience for the person. As I said a while ago, we have to look at the characteristics of the intern, the help given by the supervisor within the internship program or institute and within the university because their help would really enable the students to process their experience better. And also, as I’ve said, the structure available within the internship.

Actually, if I think about my life for example, I’ve had *inaudible* (43:31) internship experience and all these structures or institutions or individuals kind of work together to allow me to have a very good experience, but I think that my experience during my internship would still kind of help me think about things later on. There are still moments where I refer to that experience like in dealing with situations, I’m not familiar with doing things for example or even in my expectations with other people.

>> Zi Chen: Yeah, that’s true. All right, so I think we had a rich conversation using the 45 minutes. And also there is a question: so you focus your research on China, how would you say the findings apply to other countries? In other words, do you find differences between the population of the study and other groups of students in other countries in terms of career adaptability?

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah, so I think several studies have documented whether career adaptability is a construct that applies to people from different contexts and cultures. And I think several studies like the paper *inaudible* (45:10) at all have tested that indeed career adaptability is like applicable or is relevant in the Chinese sample, in the Filipino sample, in the American sample for instance, and several European scholars are also looking at career adaptability in European students. And we were able to replicate the findings that indeed, whatever nationality or culture you’re part of, the four C’s actually matter in our construction of careers and in our ability to adapt to the changing work environment. But I think I would be curious to see whether internship, I think the question should be like how does internship impact individuals from or how does that impact individuals from all these countries. And I would be interested to see the results of that empirically, but theoretically I am confident that the internship experience will build career adaptability resources.

>> Zi Chen: Right, yeah I know the career adaptability is a construct that has been studied over thirteen countries, there was a really famous paper that tested the psychometric aspects of this scale in thirteen countries. But I think yeah, I totally agree I would love to see the intervention empirical studies on like the *inaudible* (46:55) post and experiment and control effect of how that changed and why it’s changed.

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah that’s right, or maybe like if we can do cross-country comparison for instance, will internship benefit certain individuals from certain places more than individuals from other similar profiles or dissimilar profiles? Or maybe just the field itself the occupation itself as I mentioned to you, will a business student benefit more from an internship compared to let’s say a medical student or to someone in other fields. So, I would be really curious to see that.

>> Zi Chen: Right. All right, so there’s a question: in your paper, the findings show that students with high conscientiousness will turn out to have better career adaptability no matter whether they take an internship or not. So, do you have any suggestions about how to promote student’s conscientiousness level?

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah, well I think conscientiousness is a very big topic in psychology, and they say of all the personality traits, conscientiousness is really the one that matters in our success at work, in school, and even in our marriages. They say that if you have a conscientious partner, that’s it you’ve won the lottery. I think personality as we know it is a product of all of being from our parents, from our environment for example. But a way to build that is at the very start I think of life. We have to develop structures that will allow the individual to be more planful or the facility to help individuals to be more dutiful. Like maybe there are tasks involved that will just encourage individuals to build conscientiousness if we can say that. Or to impose activities or just to really encourage the person to organically get involved in activities that will encourage conscientiousness. But I think a lot of it comes from with are you really interested in what you are doing. I think at the practical level, we have to start with do we really want the work we’re part of, because I think if you’re interested in it, everything will just blend together, and it will just come together.

Another question would be like are there any other positive traits that would benefit student’s career adaptability. Yeah, so we’ve seen the role of efficacy for example, but I think I’d like to touch on some contextual experiences and also personality experiences. What is consistent is that support is a very important predictor or buffer of career adaptability development. When you’re facing a very difficult challenge for example at work, we always have to rely on the individuals we trust the most. And that will involve let’s say our supervisors, our partners, our family members for instance. As the primary precursors or individuals that will support a person to develop career adaptability.

In fact, in one of our studies published a couple of years ago, we looked at what builds career adaptability or what would help enable for individuals to express career adaptability. So, we looked at an intergeneration study of career adaptability where we measured grandparents’ level of career adaptability, the parents’ level of career adaptability, and the child’s career adaptability through these three generations. And we found that again that highly career adaptable grandparents tend to have highly career adaptable children and grandchildren. Why is that so? Because it’s about role modeling. What we learn from our parents we kind of copy these behaviors and mindset for instance, and our parents just really copied it from their own parents. So, role modeling is important in the development of career adaptability.

I think the presence of any support structures for example will also build that, and some social contacts or institutions like as I’ve said internship would be a good background to allow the individual to just really try out certain careers, figure out what’s working for them or not. And yeah, so these traits for example modeling efficacy, that learning of other people’s career behaviors and career thinking would really help develop career adaptability.

>> Zi Chen: Yeah, the study you just mentioned about the three generations are so cool. I myself would love to be researched, to be part of that.

>> Carmella Ocampo: Yeah, so that was the preliminary findings that we have. So, from grandparents to parents and to children and I think a lot of it really is just there was no explicit okay you have to do this and that. It’s part of seeing how they do it routinely and consistently over time. And because the way we approach our work problems, our work situations, we kind of always default to what we know, and the way for example our parents doing all sorts of work or grandparents doing all sorts of work would really matter or really help us navigate the world situation.

>> Zi Chen: Alright, so I guess we came to the end of our one hour together which has been a great conversation. I just want to thank you so much for taking time with us, especially so early in the morning. It’s a really fun conversation. Thank you so much guys, and thank you Carmella, have a great rest of your day.

>> Carmella Ocampo: Thank you for inviting me, and I wish I could see you all in person but thank you for questions. If you have any other questions about the paper or about anything in this particular research area, please feel free to email me and I would be very much happy to respond to your email or talk to you by Zoom or Skype, just let me know. Thank you so much.