Career development is a continuous process in an employee’s life span. During the course of their life, people grow through their experiences and make their own expectations and perceptions regarding various job dimensions. Differences arising due to these varied perceptions of employees influence the handling of key job incidents differently. Understanding employees’ needs is the core purpose of any human resource (HR) department. A comprehensive analysis of employees’ expectations and perceptions using career stage theory would help organizations understand their employees better and devise appropriate strategies for each career stage to get the desired job outcomes. Very few studies in the Indian scenario have studied the expectation and perception variations throughout the career span. The study was carried out on a sample of 329 sales personnel from Indian tractor companies. The results indicated variations in job expectations and perceptions across career stages. Theoretical and practical implications of these results and directions for future research have also been discussed.
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