Career and Family Plans of Higher Education Students as Risk Factors for their future employers’ HR Management

This paper deals with higher education students’ career and family plans based on a quantitative pilot research conducted among students studying social sciences at a research university in Eastern Hungary. According to one type of career models, namely the self-directed, protean career concept, organisations should adapt to employees’ own career interpretation, values, and attitudes, furthermore, according to the Kaleidoscope Career Model, individuals nowadays adapt their careers to their life stages. Due to this, this paper deals with students’ family plans besides their career plans. The novelty of the research is that it examines the plans of Hungarian students studying in a specific field (social sciences) and analyzes their career and family plans in parallel. The research inestigates what family and career mean to students, what influences these, whether family or career is more important to students, how students time these, and to what extent they consider these to be compatible. Research methods include descriptive statistics, bivariate analysis, and exploratory factor analysis. The results show that career goals often preceded family goals and, in accordance with traditional gender roles, career was slightly more important for male students than for female students. According to the factor analysis, students found it the most important to meet their own expectations. Furthermore, many students, especially females, interpreted career as a form of self-fulfilment. These results are in line with modern career models (the self-directed, protean career concept and the Kaleidoscope Career Model). An important implication of the research for prospective employers is the need to adapt their HR strategies to young people’s family and career plans. The research also highlights that students’ career goals are already emphasised during the studies, so employers should strengthen cooperation with universities to support students in acquiring professional experience during their studies to help them achieve their career goals.