RESOURCES

This paper proposes a conceptualization of protective and risk factors that influence the career development of an individual. According to the proposed model, protective and risk factors in career arise from the personal, relational, and situational domains. Personal factors are psychological traits that have been evidenced in the literature to influence career development, such as extraversion, conscientiousness, future orientation, optimism, flexibility, stress resilience, self-efficacy, cognitive capacity, or the health of an individual. Relational factors include social influences that can have either a positive or negative effect on career development, starting with the influence of parents, peers, and society, which manifests through social support and different relational styles. Situational factors represent different external influences that can influence career development, of which the socio-economic status and opportunities in the individual’s place of residence are recognized in the literature. The paper elaborates the above conceptualization of protective and risk factors in career development through the framework of key theoretical approaches and current research in the field.