Everybody's looking for something: Developmental networks as subjective career relationships

Developmental networks are important in shaping career success, providing knowledge and feedback, motivation, and opportunities for career seekers. Despite their importance, such networks are often tacit, emergent, and based on subjective assessments of their members; indeed, little is known about how individuals experience their own developmental networks, and understand their role on career development. To address this gap, we conducted a qualitative, inductive study to explore how individuals subjectively understand the role of their developmental network, and how these understandings relate to the kinds of relationships they seek. Using 34 in-depth interviews with French consultants, we identify heterogeneous conceptions based on how participants imagined the role of their developmental networks. Three conceptions of developmental networks emerged, based on the instrumental, substantive, and explorative aspects of networks. Based on these conceptions, we discuss how they relate to preferred daily practice in terms of acting on developmental networks, with people attaching value either to the breadth or the depth in their developmental networks.