[Python] Python Selenium how to prevent a non-link web element from opening in a new tab

I'm using Python Selenium to find an element, click it, and have the new page stay open in the same window instead of opening in a new tab. I'm trying to be careful with how I word this because I it's not an anchor or url, from what I can tell. The html is:

<div class="prevent-select">
<div></div>
<span class="tyl-list-item__text menuTitleClass" tabindex="0" data-testid="hub__tylermenu__node__title" text="Employee Job/Salary" aria-describedby="tcw-tooltip-56">Employee Job/Salary</span>
<tcw-tooltip id="tcw-tooltip-56" style="border: 0px; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; margin: -1px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute; width: 1px; outline: 0px; appearance: none;">Enterprise ERP&gt;Human Capital Management&gt;Payroll&gt;Employee Maintenance&gt;Employee Job/Salary</tcw-tooltip>
</div>


My initial code (which IS opening it in a new tab) looks like:

url_jobSalary = WebDriverWait(browser, 15).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//*[contains(text(), 'Employee Job/Salary')]"))).click()


Since researching I've tried these techniques below, none of which are working:

Technique #1

#this technique failed because get_jobSalary is returned as nothing, I guess it cannot find an href attribute
url_jobSalary = WebDriverWait(browser, 30).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//*[contains(text(), 'Employee Job/Salary')]")))
get_jobSalary = url_jobSalary.get_attribute('href')
browser.get(get_jobSalary)


Technique #2

#this one opens in a new tab still
url_jobSalary = WebDriverWait(browser, 30).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.XPATH, "//*[contains(text(), 'Employee Job/Salary')]")))
browser.execute_script("arguments[0].target='_self';", url_jobSalary)
url_jobSalary.click()


Technique #3

# Set chrome options -- I found a post that suggested adding the --profile-directory=default argument would work,
# but it still opens in a new tab
options = Options()
options.add_argument('--profile-directory=Default') #prevent element from opening in new tab or window
options.add_experimental_option("prefs", {
"download.default_directory" : download_path
})
options.headless = False
browser = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)


Finally I found this post which feels on the right track, because the page I'm scraping is using those ng- commands, but I don't know how to write the code snippet the answer shows.

Below is a screenshot of what the web element when I added it to a watch, maybe this will help:



As always, any help is greatly appreciated!!

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