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The study seeks to compare the experiences of job loss and reemployment experiences among female and male higher level managers and professionals.

The paper compares data collected at two periods in time from (n=120) females and (n=184) males who completed two self‐report questionnaires.

Relatively few gender differences were observed in the present study. The fact that females and males experienced the job loss and re‐employment process similarly was interpreted as a sign of progress. Main differences were found in networking and personality types, with men being more successful in networking and less agreeable types.

This is a self‐report study and somewhat smaller sample at time two. Secondly, some of the findings may not generalize to those outside of outplacement.

Outplacement services may use these findings in guiding their counseling practice and focusing more on helping female executives in their networking efforts for example.

This paper contributes to the gender literature by looking at experience of job loss and reemployment for a particular and rarely examined group of individuals. It offers new knowledge on gender differences among executives and higher level managers.

The purpose of this paper is to study how the interplay of the emotion of fear and the personality trait of resilience affect time to reemployment after job termination. The authors carried out the research by extending affective events theory (AET) beyond the workplace.

This paper is a conceptual paper intended to lay the groundwork for future analysis in the areas of fear and resilience, specifically in the time after job termination.

The paper suggests that fear is a natural response to job termination, and there are two responses to fear: one of action to rid oneself of fear (“fight or flight”) and one of paralysis, in which an individual remains in a fear state. The authors put forth that one's level of resilience is a factor in determining time to reemployment.

While there are numerous studies on the role emotions play in the workplace and in particular, the role of fear about potentially getting fired, there are few, if any, studies on the role of fear after losing a job. The authors feel this is a warranted area of study as fear can have both positive and negative responses. The authors also contend that a major diver of these fear responses is an individual's level of resilience, and this can be a significant predictor of the individual's time to reemployment.

Economic stressors such as job insecurity, job loss, unemployment, and underemployment cause severe difficulties for the workers affected, their families, organizations, and societies overall. Consequently, most past research has taken a thoroughly negative perspective on economic stress, addressing its diverse negative consequences and the ways that people try to cope with them. And even when following the advice provided by the scientific literature, people affected by economic stress will usually end up being off worse than they were before the onset of the stressor.

The current chapter pays credit to this perspective yet also tries to counterbalance it with an alternative one. While acknowledging the vast amount of literature outlining the negative consequences of economic stress on peoples’ well-being and careers, some literature also points at opportunities for a more positive perspective. More specifically, we argue that affected people can use a wide repertoire of behaviors for handling their current situation. Of particular promise in this regard is the concept of career adaptability, generally defined as the ability to change to fit into new career-related circumstances. Indeed, studies show that under certain conditions, career adaptability can facilitate people's search for not just any job but for a qualitatively better job, thus breaking through the spiral of losses usually associated with economic stress.

For the purpose of this argument, we link career adaptability to the concept of proactive coping, analyzing how and under which conditions career adaptability may present a contextualized form of proactive coping. We then address known personal and situational antecedents of career adaptability and show how career adaptability may be fostered and trained among different types of job seekers. We end this chapter with a discussion of open questions as well as directions for future research.

This paper aims to investigate changes in psychological well‐being over time for individuals who experienced a career disruption in the form of a company closing, and to examine the relationships between employability, well‐being, and job satisfaction. It seeks to expand on previous work of job loss relative to the long‐term impact of the experience and on Fugate et al.'s psycho‐social conceptualization of employability.

Data were collected at the time of job loss (T1) and six years later (T2). The 73 respondents at T2 represent a stratified random sample of the T1 respondents. Hypotheses were tested with paired sample t‐tests and hierarchical multiple regression.

Results indicate that the negative psychological impact of job loss diminishes over time. Additionally, employability predicted well‐being and job satisfaction.

The results of the study provide guidance for the design and administration of outplacement and related programs that focus on increasing employability and psychological well‐being, and suggest ways that individuals can shield themselves from the negative consequences associated with a job loss.

The results have policy implications for the design of government funded outplacement and retraining programs.

The paper is the first to examine job loss over a six‐year period of time, and the first to examine the impact of employability attributes on multiple indicators of well‐being and on job satisfaction in the job loss context.

The purpose of this paper is to test a process model of coping with job loss by examining the impact of distal to proximal variable sets for incrementally explaining two distinct subjective well‐being variables: life satisfaction and unemployment stigma. A second purpose is to test for mean differences between study scales for increasingly long‐term unemployed individuals.

A unique sample of unemployed victims completed an online survey investigating the impact of six variable sets on life satisfaction and unemployment stigma. These sets fall within the McKee‐Ryan et al. taxonomy and included: human capital and demographics; personal and financial coping resources; cognitive appraisal; escape‐focused coping; problem‐focused coping; and job search effort.

Results partially supported the hypothesized variable set impact order on both life satisfaction and unemployment stigma. In addition some significant differences on study variables were found comparing four unemployed groups: up to six months; and three progressively long‐term unemployed groups, i.e. seven to 12 months; 13 to 24 months; and over 24 months, with the over 24 month unemployed respondents (23 per cent of the sample) suffering the most.

The cross‐sectional self‐report study research design is the foremost limitation. However, given the challenges of collecting unemployment related‐data on such a diverse sample, the unemployment agency/job services recent‐job‐loss‐respondent longitudinal data collection approach used in previous research was not an option. The one‐factor test found that only 15 per cent of “common method variance” was explained by the first factor, suggesting that this is not an overriding limitation. Survey constraints necessitated using shortened validated scales in several instances. However, the authors did select the highest loading items when shortening scales and such scales were generally reliable.

Implications of study results for careers and steps to prevent longer‐term unemployment are discussed. There seemed to be a general “disconnect” between unemployed respondent self‐ratings of positive skill assessment, networking comfort, and proactive search, all of which were fairly high, against recent behavioral job search which was lower. This disconnect suggests that it may be hard for many unemployed to objectively look at their job search process.

A unique unemployed sample, primarily executives, middle managers and professional, salaried individuals, with most being longer‐term unemployed, was utilized. Initial psychometric support for several new scales was found, including unemployment stigma and behavioral job search. This study represented a fairly comprehensive test of the McKee‐Ryan et al. taxonomy for correlates of psychological well‐being during unemployment specifically applied to life satisfaction and unemployment stigma. An innovative on‐line data collection approach, snowball sampling, was used.

Searching for a job is an important process that influences short- and long-term career outcomes as well as well-being and psychological health. As such, job search research has grown tremendously over the last two decades. In this chapter, the authors provide an overview of prior research, discuss important trends in current research, and suggest areas for future research. The authors conceptualize the job search as an unfolding process (i.e., a process through which job seekers navigate through stages to achieve their goal of finding and accepting a job) in which job seekers engage in self-regulation behaviors. The authors contrast research that has taken a between-person, static approach with research that has taken a within-person, dynamic approach and highlight the importance of combining between- and within-person designs in order to have a more holistic understanding of the job search process. Finally, authors provide some recommendations for future research. Much remains to be learned about what influences job search self-regulation, and how job self-regulation influences job search and employment outcomes depending on individual, contextual, and environmental factors.

Individuals normally make fairness judgements when experiencing negative outcomes on an important task, such as finding employment. Fairness is an affect-laden subjective experience. Perceptions of injustice can cause resource depletion in unemployed job seekers, potentially leading to reduced self-regulation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of: first, justice perceptions during a job search and their impact on job search self-efficacy (JSSE); second, the mediating role of JSSE between justice perceptions and job search strategies; and third, associations between job search strategies and quantity and quality of job search behavior.

Unemployed individuals (n=254) who were actively searching for a job reported on their past job search experiences with respect to justice, completed measures of JSSE, and reported recent job search behavior.

Results reveal the potentially harmful impact of perceived injustice on job search strategies and the mediating role of JSSE, a self-regulatory construct and an important resource when looking for a job. Specifically, perceived injustice is negatively associated with JSSE. Reduced JSSE is associated with a haphazard job search strategy and less likelihood of exploratory and focussed strategies. A haphazard job search strategy is associated with making fewer job applications and poor decision making. Conversely, perceived justice is associated with higher JSSE and exploratory and focussed job search strategies. These two strategies are generally associated with higher quality job search behavior.

There are two major limitations. First, while grounded in social-cognitive theory of self-regulation and conservation of resources (COR) theory, a cross-sectional research design limits determination of causality in the model of JSSE as a central social-cognitive mechanism explaining how justice impacts job search strategies. Second, some results may be conservative because social desirability may have restricted the range of negative responses.

This study provides insights to individuals who are supporting job seekers (e.g. career counselors, coaches, employers, and social networks). Specifically, interventions aimed at reducing perceptions of injustice, increasing JSSE, and improving job search strategies and behavior may ameliorate the damaging impact of perceived injustice.

This study is the first to examine perceived justice in the job search process using social-cognitive theory of self-regulation and COR theory. Moreover, we provide further validation to a relatively new and under-researched job search strategy typology by linking the strategies to the quantity and quality of job search behaviors.

Given the increasing diversity in the age of job seekers worldwide and evidence of perceptions of discrimination and stereotypes of job seekers at both ends of the age continuum, the purpose of this paper is to identify how perceptions of age-related bias are connected to age-related identity management strategies of unemployed job seekers.

Data were collected from 129 unemployed job-seeking adults who were participants in a career placement service. Participants completed paper-and-pencil surveys about their experiences of age-related bias and engagement in age-related identity management strategies during their job searches.

Older job seekers reported greater perceptions of age-related bias in employment settings, and perceptions of bias related to engaging in attempts to counteract stereotypes, mislead or miscue about one's age, and avoid age-related discussions in job searching. Individuals who were less anxious about their job search were less likely to mislead about age or avoid the topic of age, whereas individuals with higher job-search self-efficacy were more likely to acknowledge their age during their job search. Older job seekers higher in emotion control were more likely to acknowledge their age.

Little is known about how job seekers attempt to compensate for or avoid age-related bias. The study provides evidence that younger and older job seekers engage in age-related identity management and that job search competencies relate to engagement in particular strategies.

The purpose of this study is to examine the (1) psychometric properties of Crossley and Highhouse's job search strategy scale and (2) the predictive utility of the scale on fit perceptions.

Data were collected from unemployed job seekers in Ghana (n_T1 = 720; n_T2 = 418). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to examine the data.

Exploratory factor analysis on the first random sub-sample (n = 362) supported a three-factor model. Confirmatory factor analysis on the second random sub-sample (n = 358) confirmed the three-factor structure and was invariant across job search contexts and genders. Moreover, structural path results showed that the use of focussed and exploratory job search strategies facilitated positive fit perceptions and the use of haphazard job search resulted in poor job fit perceptions.

This study is the first to examine the dimensionality of job search strategies based on different job search context by linking it to fit perceptions. Moreover, the authors provide evidence that the job search strategy scale has a valid psychometric property and a promising instrument to assess job search behaviour across job search contexts and genders in an understudied population.