The Platformisation of Career

This thesis explores the experiences of students making use of digital platforms as part of their career
transitions after university. This thesis is rooted in the theoretical tradition of career development but
aims to bring this into contact with new sociological understandings of digital platforms to enhance
and contribute new theoretical knowledge to this area. Furthermore, the context for this theoretical
work is the development of Higher Education institutions in the UK, driven by policy directives to
increasingly focus on graduate outcomes and simultaneously see the same institutions undergoing a
process of digitisation as digital applications and platforms become increasingly prevalent in Higher
Education. Through a longitudinal design, data was gathered from students. This was analysed
through narrative and phenomenological methods. Findings are presented which explore how
platforms increasingly frame the structure of career transitions, as well as students' understanding of
career development. From my narrative findings, I presented six typological narratives: “Personal
Developers”, “Digital Residents”, “Sidesteppers”, “Instrumentalists”, “Disenchanted Applicants”, and
“Networked Aspirants”. From these narratives I drew out three main lessons, firstly that different job
sectors shape social media use in various ways, secondly that these six typological narrative groups
often made use of different practices from one another, and finally that digital technology leads to
career development that is fundamentally hybrid. From my thematic findings, I presented eight
themes from my data: induction, presentation, connecting, learning, sharing content, recruitment,
navigating e-safety, and invisible platforms. Based on these, I argue for a new theory of career
development entitled the platformisation of career where I claim that changes in structure brought
about by digital platforms and the accompanying changes in beliefs create the need for new digital
practices related to career.