One Step at a Time: Participant Perspectives on Career Pathways

This brief is based on in-depth, in-person interviews conducted between October 2019 and January 2020 with a purposive sample of 153 program participants across 14 local HPOG 2.0 programs. It reports themes emerging from these interviews.

The researchers selected the 14 programs to reflect diversity in grantee organization type, geography, projected enrollment, prior HPOG grant experience, demographic characteristics of their participants, and percentage of those participants receiving non-financial support services such as academic coaching and career coaching.

They recruited participants to reflect each local program population in demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, levels of healthcare training (entry, mid-, or high-level), and variation in progress through training. Interviews were semi-structured and covered a common set of topics: career pathways; employment and education histories; experience of the HPOG 2.0 training; managing work, family, and training; and finances.

Compared with HPOG 2.0 participants in the selected programs, the interview sample had slightly more participants who identified as White, slightly fewer participants who identified as Black or Hispanic, more women, slightly more participants receiving support services, and slightly fewer participants enrolling in multiple trainings. For this brief, the researchers supplemented the interview data with information collected for the implementation study associated with the broader HPOG 2.0 National Evaluation.

This brief adds to the body of research documenting participants’ lived experiences in career pathways programs by exploring how a sample of HPOG 2.0 participants made decisions along their career pathways to reach their longer-term career goals.

(This report is 19 pages in length and was published in 2022.)

The researchers identified the following findings:

• HPOG program case managers and program instructors helped participants to think about and structure their chosen career pathway, including their next pathway step.
• In some cases, completing a training builds a participant’s confidence to consider pursuing the next step on their chosen pathway. At the very least, completing a training gave a participant both academic/occupational skills and interpersonal skills important to moving forward.
• Local HPOG programs, by necessity, structured participants’ occupational choices within certain career tracks. For some participants, HPOG funding timelines also limited next steps. Those who entered the program towards the end of the grant period had fewer HPOG-funded training choices than those who entered towards its start. Those who started towards the end did not have time to complete longer training sessions with HPOG assistance.
• Those participants who had to think about taking on subsequent training without HPOG assistance anticipated a range of potential barriers, including how to pay for the training. As a result, they anticipated delaying future training.
• Interviewees reported that HPOG program support played an important role in overcoming barriers to moving along their career pathway. They described how decisions to take on additional training were strongly influenced by outside factors such as family needs or financial obligations.

The researchers identified the following recommendations:

• Findings raise questions about the structure of the HPOG program to support participants in making progress along career pathways. Instead of a focused five-year grant, participants might benefit from an ongoing resource that they can return to for further training and assistance later in their career pathway.
• Expect to see outcomes and impacts on a longer-than-anticipated trajectory. Given the reality of staggered career pathways (extended work spells between training sessions), researchers and policymakers should look for outcomes and impacts on a significantly longer timeframe than originally anticipated by the HPOG Program and the HPOG 2.0 National Evaluation.
• Consider using a broader range of outcomes to measure program impact. For example, measuring self-empowerment, self-confidence, or goal articulation are all outcomes that could improve a participant’s quality of life in unanticipated ways.

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2022
• Author(s): Thomas, H.
• Funding Source: Administration for Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Justin Venneri
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies