Perpetual Pivot Points: How Gig Careerists Experience and Navigate Job Search and Job Change

Abstract

Through an inductive study of individuals working in film production, this dissertation elucidates the process of perpetual project exit, job search, and reemployment as experienced by gig careerists (freelancers working sequential projects in temporary organizations). We know very little about career progression and its enablers in contexts where individuals assume jobs for pre-specified, finite periods of time. Employing a grounded theory approach drawing on 46 informant interviews, I explore the interpretations, subjective contextual interactions, and relational dynamics of gig careerists as they leave, seek, and start new jobs over and over again. Findings reveal cycles of all-encompassing, personally exhausting anchor projects alternating with quieter periods of nonwork or smaller scope projects. Informants distanced themselves from typical job search in order to enable their recovery and to invest in more passive, informal job search that used individual reputations to attract opportunities. To cultivate positive individual reputations, foster social solidarity within their teams, and thus attain career continuity, individuals exhibited team performance supporting practices during anchor projects. This study contributes to job search scholarship and the nontraditional careers literature.