Career Ambition as a Way of Understanding the Relation Between Locus of Control and Self-Perceived Employability Among Psychology Students

Abstract

Employability is one of the core concepts for the future career. Students’ self-perceived employability is the concept that connects students’ present context of education with their future professional engagement. Students’ self-perceived employability is defined as the capacity to gain and keep employment in line with their future qualification level. Locus of control is a concept that explains where the person situates the causation of various life events. It is found that internal locus of control was related to different aspects of career success. Career ambition is regarded as a proxy for students’ future career success. Both internal locus of control and ambition lead to proactive behaviors that are relevant for employability and consequently result in securing a sustainable job. The aim of this mixed-method study was to investigate the relations among locus of control, ambition and students’ self-perceived employability. Firstly, we tested mediating role of career ambition in relation of internal locus of control and students’ self-perceived employability, then we turned to qualitative analysis of students’ career self-SWOT analyses in order to deepen and enrich quantitative findings. The sample consisted of 124 undergraduate psychology students that filled out Levenson’s Internality subscale from IPC locus of control scale, Rothwell et al. (2008) Ambition subscale, and three items extracted from the Self-perceived employability subscale. Majority of the survey participants (N = 100) filled out personal career SWOT analysis. The mediation analysis showed that career ambition had a mediating role in the relation between the locus of control and employability. Students perceived personal capabilities and ambition as internal strengths and lack of ambition as a major internal weakness. As external opportunities students perceived various chances for developing professional skills, whereas as external threats they perceived limited opportunities in job market. In order to support university students to develop employability and future career success, university curricula should support developing future work skills that, in addition to functional competences and personal resources, entail career ambition, ways of utilizing external opportunities and dealing with job market threats.

The Impact of University-Related Variables on Students’ Perceived Employability and Mental Well-Being: An Italian Longitudinal Study

“…Locke and Latham's [39] Goal Setting theory also suggests that goals' characteristics, such as clarity, play a role in motivating and maintaining efforts to achieve them. In line with this literature, Ćurić Dražić et al [40] indicated in career ambition a predictor of perceived employability. Following this reasoning, ambition could be conceived as an underlying mechanism that placed values on outcomes to achieve, linking the beliefs about students' personal efforts to career success.…”

Got Employer Image? How Applicants Choose Their Employer

“…A 6-item subscale of the Perceived Employability Scale by Rothwell et al (2008) was used (for items see Appendix 1). Although this subscale reached a Cronbach's alpha value between α = 0.60 and 0.76 in prior studies (Rothwell et al 2008(Rothwell et al , 2009Curic Drazic et al 2018), it was specifically designed for university graduates. The scale's internal consistency value of Cronbach's alpha in this study was α = 0.64.…”

Emotion Regulation and Employability: The Mediational Role of Ambition and a Protean Career among Unemployed People

“…While most studies is conducted on workers and less is known about unemployed people, research confirms that goal clarity, ambition [42,43], a protean career orientation [44][45][46] and proactive behaviours [16] should be considered antecedents of perceived employability. However, a detailed explanation on this process is still lacking.…”

“…Along the same line, ambition can positively affect the level of self-perceived employability [42]. In 2018, Ćurić Dražić and colleagues [43] investigated the relationships among locus of control, ambition, and self-perceived employability, and found that career ambition acted as a mediator in the relationship between locus of control and employability, and that ambition was strongly and positively related to employability. According to these authors, ambition could be regarded as a mechanism that put values on outcomes, connecting beliefs about personal efforts that stemmed from the internal locus of control to career success.…”