“I CONFESS THAT...”: A STUDY OF BARRIERS, SELF-MANAGEMENT AND CAREER EXPERIENCES BY UNDERGRADUATES DURING PANDEMIC COVID-19

This study aimed to explain how perceived career barriers impacted career self-management of undergraduates at a public university in the context of Covid-19 pandemic. Following a qualitative approach, documental research was adopted as a methodological strategy by collecting posts from the “Segredos” page on the Facebook, which is a space for discussions by the academic community. Data were coded, analyzed and guided by content analysis with thematic categorization a posteriori. The thematic categories was obtained by the analysis: career barriers and career self-management. The results showed that in the face of the atypical context of contextual crises, students perceive numerous external barriers (education, economics, politics, financial restrictions and family condition) and internal barriers (mental health). With the pandemic context, career self-management has become more intense and complex. Students have been adopting productive and non-productive coping to face the perceived barriers. The theoretical contribution of this study is mainly the complexification of career self-management. In the pandemic period, it is possible that non-productive coping can become relatively a productive coping, helping university students to face barriers.

Keywords:
Career; Career Barriers; Self-management; Covid-19 Pandemic