Career concept is the conceptual structure underlying a person’s thinking concerning his/her career. The structural elements refer to the way in which one’s ideas on career are organized. The critical structural elements are time, permanence of career choice and direction of career change. On these elements, career concept is of four types. They are:
1. Steady State Career Concept: This concept entails that person selects a job or field early in life and stays with it for life. It does not have any movement except to higher positions or professional skill.
2. Transitory Career Concept: This concept entails that a person does not set any fixed job or field permanently but move along from job to job with no particular pattern. The individual is indifferent in choosing jobs and rolls over many types of job in life.
3. Linear Career Concept: This concept is one in which individual chooses a field early in life and stays in the field lifelong and moves upward within that field through the organizational hierarchy or within a relevant reference group , such as professional association.
4. Spiral Career Concept: This career concept involves a view that one develops in a given field for a period of time; then one moves on to a related or a totally new area.