Mapping Career Mobility: Key Insights from the DIAMOND ᴱGROW Profiles Community Poll
Understanding how individuals perceive their career trajectory in an evolving labour market is essential for designing effective, evidence-informed employment strategies. To explore how professionals and job seekers view their current professional standing, the DIAMOND project recently conducted a cross-platform poll centred on the ᴱGROW Index growth profiles.
By analysing the community’s input across LinkedIn, Instagram and X, the poll results offer valuable qualitative insights into how modern workers navigate career changes, skill development, and market demands.
The Poll Breakdown: How Professionals Identify Their Growth Path
Looking at the average results across LinkedIn, Instagram, and X provided a snapshot of how the DIAMOND community identified with the different career growth profiles:
- Explorer (43.3% – Top Choice): More than four in ten respondents identified as Explorers, indicating a strong interest in seeking new opportunities, investigating emerging industries, and exploring new career directions.
- Accelerator (23.3%): Almost a quarter of participants identified with Accelerating, focusing on advancing within their existing field, taking on greater responsibilities, and developing their capabilities.
- Rebuilder / Pathfinder (18.3%): Nearly one in five identified with rebuilding their career or finding new paths, reflecting individuals navigating career pivots, re-entering the workforce, or adapting to changes in their sector.
- Connector / Future-Skills Builder (15%): A further group emphasised building professional networks and acquiring future-ready capabilities to strengthen their long-term adaptability.
Why Person-Centred Growth Profiles Matter
The strong leaning toward the Explorer profile highlights a fundamental shift in the modern economy: rigid, linear career ladders are increasingly being replaced by more fluid, diverse, and multi-directional career paths (More on this topic by the OEC).
As highlighted in community discussions around the poll, “the path to truly leveling up often involves navigating uncharted challenges.” Standardised, one-size-fits-all employment programmes frequently fail to account for these nuances.
Frameworks like the DIAMOND ᴱGROW Index address this gap by moving away from static job categories. By evaluating capabilities across six dynamic profiles (Explorer, Accelerator, Rebuilder, Pathfinder, Connector, and Future-Skills), the index provides a supportive, person-centred tool that helps individuals and career advisors map out realistic, tailored transition strategies.
Funding Agency: European Research Executive Agency (REA)
