Declaration of Academic Integrity

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We confirm that:
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including the information on practices concerning the academic integrity (given in
http://academicintegrity.ntu.edu.sg/a-guide-to-academic-integrity/) and that in the
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and for quality assurance purposes.

We have read and accept the above.

NAME

TUE/WED

Chua Wei Xing

Wed

K. Sudesh Durai

Wed

DATE

SIGNATURE
[for hard copy submission]

NO OF WORDS -____3584____
We have read and accept the above.
If you require any further guidance about academic integrity, please talk to your professor or
use the resources at http://academicintegrity.ntu.edu.sg/.
1

SUMMARY FINDINGS OF INTERVIEWEES

In relating the summary findings with the questions, we had investigated the personality traits
of each interviewee as this forms the core of environmental influences and towards emotional
intelligence.
Interviewee 1
Personal Information
The interviewee is a male, Malaysian-born, 39, Chinese and belongs to Hokkien ethnic group.
He has no present physical or mental issues. His highest education level is equivalent to
Cambridge GCE O Level.
Work situation in general
Assistant Chef in Delifrance
(transferred to 2 other outlets
in total)

Age: 22

Quality Control (QC) in DHL Logistics

Warehouse

25

39 (present)

Figure 1: Time frame of the jobs for Interviewee 1

For the traits of Interviewee 1, he is quite practical, conceited and consistently angered by
minor negative events in work. This can be inferred from his growing environment and the
education level he received. He came to Singapore to work straight after studies and his
working life is portrayed in Figure 1. He is much more satisfied in his 2 nd job and hence,
worked longer.
Summary of interviewees work
During the interview, his passion in work died down through the years. His major job hop
made at 25 was to secure a higher salary due to his increasing responsibility to support his
family. Due to this declining passion, he regards his work as only a job. Rather, he felt
satisfied in his position as he needs not be constantly stressed as before. In his 2 nd job, he was
given a chance to further his studies for diploma in logistics with 90% subsidisation from the
company. Eventually, he declined due to the fear to take on more work after completing his
studies.

Interviewee 2
Personal Information
The interviewee is a male, Singapore-born, 54, Indian and belongs to Tamil ethnic group. He
has no present physical or mental issues. His highest education level is equivalent to a
Diploma in Mechanical Engineering from Singapore Polytechnic.
Work situation in general
Technician in
Singapore
Polytechnic after
graduation
Age: 24

Technician
Engineerinin SIA
SIA

Assistant Foreman in
Pratt & Whitney

38

54 (present)

Figure 2: Time frame of the jobs for Interviewee 2

Interviewee 2 is livelier, outspoken and self-motivated. Upon graduation, he stayed in his
tertiary school as a technician to work hard towards his goal as an engineer in the future. He
had worked 2 jobs in total and was forced to make a job hop as his company was bought over
when he was in SIA. Through the interview, he felt much happier in his 2nd job and hence,
worked over a much longer period because it enabled him to fulfil his childhood dream of
becoming an engineer.
Summary of interviewees work
Interviewee 2 has passion in his work and also regards money as equally important. He felt
that both passion and money can work together in his career. He applied his technical skills
from his studies to work. Also, he is enthusiastic about learning new technologies every now
and then in aircraft engines. Besides that, he is very recognised in his work. He felt happy to
enjoy his work and can support his family at the same time. It was evident in one instance
where he rejected a work transfer to a place he liked it better. This was because that would
mean a lower pay and might cause an increase in the financial burden to the family.

Interviewee 3
Personal Information
The interviewee is a male, Singapore-born, 52, Indian and belongs to Tamil ethnic group. He
has no present mental issues. However, he had been having some back problems lately. His
highest education level is equivalent to a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering. His youngest
child has approximately another 10 years to complete the education.
Work situation in general

Technician

Age: 20

Skilled-Welder

Supervisor in GE Aviation and

Part time Real Estate Agent

40

52 (present)

Figure 3: Time frame of the jobs for Interviewee 3

For Interviewee 3, he is not satisfied of his current status and will constantly improve himself
to make himself a better person. Starting out as a technician, he decided to pick up other
practical skills such as welding of electrical parts. This made him to have a successful job hop
to ensure he had had a job then. He did not give up his initial dream and finally made it when
he had attained financial stability. However, due to some unforeseen circumstances, he had to
become a part time real estate agent for his future as he might not be able to continue his
present work due to his back problems.
Summary of interviewees work
Interviewee 3 is very impressive as he is highly self-motivated. Apart from work, he also
constantly improves himself in his studies. During his 1 st job as a technician, he did part time
diploma studies. He yearned for a wider job scope with higher qualifications. He is very
similar to Interviewee 2 as both keeps their passion and responsibilities in check. In his work,
he also did his very best to inspect aircraft engines and certify them for safety for flight. He
understands the responsibility of his job and takes pride in delivering results.
Summary of all interviewees
All 3 interviewees were and are salaried workers and their jobs are neither a protean nor a
boundaryless career. All made changes in their career paths due to sudden forces of change,
such as universality of education for Interviewee 3 or even coping with the need to adapt to an
increasing workload in their various jobscopes. Still, each personally portrayed a different
attitude in work and made use of continuous integrative life planning.

QUESTION 1: Analyse and discuss the applicability, influence and relevance of the
environment and self-awareness in developing their respective careers using relevant
theories to support your observations and conclusions.
Definitions of environment and self-awareness
The environment includes everything around the person that is capable to create an impact on
oneself, both physically and psychologically. Self-awareness is being conscious and able to
constantly understanding oneself the required responsibilities needed in work.
Both factors significantly contribute to career development as they can make major changes in
the working life of the individual. This will result in moulding a certain way of career
management.
Environmental factors and self-awareness on career development
Interviewee 1
With reference to the summary findings, he made two critical changes in his career
development. He had a career change and rejected an opportunity in his 2nd job to study part
time diploma.
This matched Krumboltz (1984, 1990, 1996) social learning theory of genetic endowment,
learning experiences, task approach skills and environmental conditions. Being self-aware
encourages positive career development and this utilises the first three theories of Krumboltz.
Firstly, Interviewee 1 lacked of self-awareness. Due to his growing environment as a Chinese
Hokkien, he is less conscious in his conduct and not intelligent enough attributing from his
education level as well. Being more associative in learning, he did not plan ahead of setting
career goals. In his 1st job, he faced gradual increase in workload but his pay remained the
same. When his environment changed, this caused him to search for job alternatives abruptly.
This is because the rate of return in his 1st job decreases, leading him to take actions to seek
for higher marginal benefits to costs (as in Economics). By using his task approach skills in
career management, this is considered as generating constructive approach to bypass his
barrier of frustration to achieve a higher work satisfaction. As his main motivation is money, a
material satisfaction will make him happier. Moreover, the career switch pays higher with less
workload. This eventually led him to decide his career choice for a switch. Other theories
could explain this phenomenon of career change as well. Hollands theory of occupational
classification categorised him as conventional and realistic, mismatching his environment in
his 1st job. A mismatch of personality and environment meant a job dissatisfaction. Also,
Roberts Theory concluded environment as one of the determinants of career choices. He
decided the switch as quoted from Martin Seligman, he fulfilled 2 of the 3 parts of authentic
happiness. He felt good in himself and lived a better life with his companions when he deals
with less work. Regarding his rejection of academic opportunities, Krumboltzs theory can be
used again. Krumboltzs theory suggested his practical skills approach made him felt easier
than learning in a theoretical way. With studies, he will have less time for his family. With
integrative life planning, he connects his family and work together and have a high
importance in carrying the financial burden which made him being satisfied with his current
status.

Figure 4: Supers Archway Model[1] (Kamal Kant, page 48) describing an archway consisting
of personal characteristics of the individual and the society in relation to the environment. The
pillar columns interact and dependent on each other. The self constitutes the top pillar that
supports the career foundation which is the archway builder, who is also the decision maker.
Supers Archway model creates self and environmental awareness in oneself. The societal
column affected his career change. This interacted with his psychological and personal traits.
As the increase in workload is unforeseen, his expectancy for a decreasing workload would
drop sharply. Therefore, these two columns will make a significant impact to himself on the
top pillar. This shapes a change in his career foundation, which implies a decision is to be
made to achieve greater work satisfaction. Since the benefits of the 2nd job remained higher
then, he made this career switch. However, the need for consistent academic improvement in
the societal column was unable to influence his psychological thinking. This is because of the
sudden change of having a family. This would suggest additional responsibilities.
Parson (1908) theory did match the theory of him landing in his first job, a matching of his
talent to the specific job. Initially, the interviewee had a strong passion in cooking. Events
turned on a downside when his working environment changed. Rather, theories categorising
developmental stages of the career would be more expected for career changes along the way.
Interviewee 2
For Interviewee 2, he had a much more positive mindset and ensured he enjoyed what he do.
His intrinsic character could also be influenced by his growing environment as an Indian
Tamil. In this case, the theory crafted by Ginzberg and his colleagues (1951) suited better as
his career was reached through gradual development. The developmental phases influence his
career choices in reality, education, emotional and individual values. He landed in his 1st job
successfully as a technician first as his education received is insufficient to achieve his goal
straight. Instead, he thought of gaining work experiences and thereafter, work hard towards
his aspirations for an engineer. This also fitted into the career stages for the range of 20s,
where individuals focus mainly on the job itself only. Additional influences such as support
from his companions made him go a far way in his career.
During his time as a technician, he was once offered for a career switch to work towards his
aspirations. The condition was to have a dip in his current pay. Despite his passion for the
switch, he was very self-aware of his situation to support his family. Integrative life planning
is evident that he is conscious of the needs to connect family and work together. Also, he did
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not pursue a degree for the same reason. Regardless of the pity to fulfil his dream, he was
constantly recognised and credited in his work. These motivations generated positive
psychology where a subjective well-being arised from a combination of life satisfaction and
having more positive than negative emotions.[2]
Eventually, he took a long time to reach the decision of the career switch to be an assistant
foreman. By then, he was financially stable and his spouse also started to work. This ease his
worries regarding money. Regards to Supers Archway model, the societal improvements
(right column of Figure 4) secured his psychological and personal thinkings to pursue for his
passion. With continuous encouragement and support from his family and friends, he carried
out his desires though with a small sacrifice of a pay cut. This is also described by Roes
theory of vocational development in the relationship between occupational behaviour and
personality. This is also substantiated by the Maslows Hierarchy of Basic Needs, where he is
capable to attain self-actualisation in achieving the four categories of needs below: Esteem,
love, safety and physiological needs.
Interviewee 2 has a slightly better career management than Interviewee 1. Even though both
had the same education level, Interviewee 2 is capable to achieve a higher satisfaction in his
work and maintaining his basic needs in his life. Interviewee 1 has only obtained his material
needs for money.
Interviewee 3
Interviewee 3 had a great sense of self-awareness in his career development. In selfdetermination theory, he had an intrinsic motivation based on his interest and enjoyment
obtained. Based on Krumboltz theory, he preferred instrumental learning experiences. This
paced himself clearly in his career plan for the needs and possible attainments along the way.
Similar to Interviewee 2, he wished to attain both passion and money from his work. Thus, he
started out as a technician and progressively learnt more skills. In his 1st job, he started out as
a technician in the polytechnic while pursuing his diploma on a part time basis. By relating to
Maslows Hierarchy of Basic Needs, he learnt welding and made the career switch to fulfil the
physiological needs due to a higher remuneration. He took a greater effort than Interviewee 2
for working longer to achieve his goal in GE Aviation. He came a long way which provided
both the remuneration as well as recognition that he wanted.

Figure 5: Supers Life Career Rainbow[1]

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Apart from the other two interviewees, Interviewee 3 had more job changes. In his last career
switch as a part-time agent, this is seen as a force of change due to a decline in the Supers
life-career rainbow. In Figure 5, Supers life-career rainbow depicts how environment,
situation and personal factors determine the career choices from young to old. Despite having
a deterioration in his health, he yearned for career and life satisfaction. This largely displayed
his ability to adapt to changes in his career and manage well.
Comparing all the interviewees, it is apparent that Interviewee 1 did not achieve both
satisfaction from his work. Although it is generally perceived that the Chinese are more
hardworking, it still varied among people and the development path of the individual careers.
Most importantly, it is vital to acquire the desires of the individual and shapes the career path
along the way from unexpected changes in environment or even personality.
Question 2: Based on what you learnt from your three interviewees, and research that
you may carry out, discuss the importance of emotional intelligence in achieving your
career goals and attaining career success during the first five years after graduation of
the two authors of the essays. You should support assertions and claims with appropriate
research (e.g. theories, concepts, etc.) you may have carried out.
Career paths
For the course of study, one is in chemical engineering (Wei Xing) while the other is in
mechanical engineering (K Sudesh Durai). However, there is a different career approach both
are taking on. Wei Xing would most likely pursue a career in the petroleum industry while
Sudesh will be planning on starting up or running a company within 5 years of graduation.
Wei Xing would be joining the petroleum company and Sudesh would be in the product
development industry. The main reason for Wei Xing is to attain a stable income to make
goals while Sudesh has been passionate about entrepreneurship and has started a venture on
his own. Wei Xing felt that a stable income foundation could do more in the future while
Sudesh felt that achieving his personal goals at earlier stages with less responsibilities can
take on more opportunity risks such as start-ups.
Importance of emotional intelligence in career goals and success
In any career success, it is very important to have a high emotional intelligence. At the start, it
is very common and easier to commit mistakes due to the lack of experiences. High emotional
intelligence is very helpful along the way for career success. However, it is also required to be
coupled with high intelligence quotient. This means to be successful, an individual must
possess both EQ and IQ. In Singapore today, the universality of education made the younger
generations possess higher IQ than EQ in general. It is equally important to have EQ too.
There has been evidence of positive relationship between emotional intelligence and job
satisfaction[1]. Hence we are able to deduce the level of importance EQ has when it comes to
influencing our careers.
Emotional intelligence is the capability to manage ones emotions in any form of
environment. The measurement of emotional quotient (EQ) level is the measure of emotional
intelligence. In short, it is the ability to take good control over ones personal feelings and
totally separate them in work.

For the case of both of us, one of us aspires to be an engineer whiles the other an
entrepreneur. Despite different job scopes, a large amount of workload will be undertaken by
us and we would require a cohesive relationship with the team of engineering assistant all the
way to accountants and workers for proper work delegation. With regards to teamwork,
employers need a virtuoso team, a strong team of workers with effective teamwork. This
would mean that the team members must have applicable set of skills which is relevant to the
project or job. This would ensure efficiency and effectiveness of the team and not have idle
workers. Leadership is also important for a successful team and there must not be too many
people giving instructions and leading else this would make the team inefficient once again.
Leaders should be tasked to giving clear instructions, completing tasks on time and being
empathetic towards his workers. It would be expected of a leader to have a high level of
emotional intelligence since he would need to liaise with different groups of people to get the
job done more than the workers who would be focusing on a specific goal which would
require more of their technical ability. Besides being able to empathise, it is also necessary to
motivate peers or colleagues. This can help to improve productivity as well as foster
relationships which ultimately improve the working environment for all.
Having a high emotional intelligence in work would mean to take proper control of oneself,
and also the people working with. Quoting from Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer (1990),
emotional intelligence forms part of social intelligence in being able to control ones emotions
well and letting the right emotions guide the way. For example, being emotionally intelligent
would employ a right method to resolve probable conflicts, instead of using violence as this
might snowball to more conflicts. A study [3] had been done on the emotional intelligence,
based on Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence, of thirty violent and thirty non-violent
groups on EQ test. The hypothesis proposed that the violent group achieved a lower average
EQ score than the non-violent. This meant that resolution of matters would tend to be physical
for people with lower emotional intelligence. Any violence would result in unexpected
injuries or even deaths. This would also strain working relationships and drift further away
from career success. Furthermore, for Wei Xing, safety is of great importance in engineering.
For Sudesh, it would be very detrimental in the long run as cohesive teamwork is of great
importance in starting up or running a company. Conflicts are bound to arise and various
methods to resolve conflicts other than using physical means would be a better choice in short
and long term. Having a high emotional intelligence could reduce conflicts and solve them
amicably if the need arises. The clichd statement of prevention is better than cure would
aptly apply here.
Daniel Goleman (1995) added to having emotional intelligence is more than just have IQ. It is
to have five domains of emotional intelligence. It involved managing and motivating oneself
and the people around. This supported the need to understand the people working with,
providing the correct mode of help when needed. However, this needs a balance between
work and empathy. Therefore, a certain level of trust is to be instilled in both of us engineers
and the workers. For example, if one of the colleagues had to take urgent leave due to family,
we need to provide enough help by ensuring his leave is approved fast, delegating his work
and empathise with his/her situation. On the other hand, punishments should be meted out to
deter possible abusement of the system as well.
Self-motivation raises EQ as well. Self-motivation can result in a positive psychological
influence and motivates the people around. In general, this will allow the whole team to be
motivated and strive to do the work well. This would greatly reduce mistakes and increase

work efficiency. Also, this could create a happy environment and disagreements could be
resolved much easily.
In short, emotional intelligence is a very useful tool in associating oneself with the
environment and people around. However, it is necessary to have high IQ to complete tasks
efficiently and resolve probable difficulties along the way. This would then bring out a good
demonstration of leadership and cooperation from the people around, leading to reaching
career goals and success.
References
1. Kamal Kant (2011). Work and Careers in the 21st Century. McGraw-Hill.
2. Ed Diener: Happiness. Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth.
3. Knight, Jennifer Anne, Psy.D (2005). Exploring emotional intelligence and IQ:
Comparing violent and non-violent criminal offenders. Miami: Carlos Albizu University.

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