From School to Work: Improving Graduates’ Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy

Abstract

As boundaryless careers become mainstream, individuals need to enhance career decision-making self-efficacy (CDSE) during career transitions to secure better employment outcomes and sustainable career development, especially when moving from a school to a work environment. Drawing on social cognitive career theory, this study empirically proposed a moderated mediation model to examine whether proactive personality (measured at Time 1), career success criteria clarity (CSCC, measured at Time 2), and family socioeconomic status (including family income, parents’ educational level, and parents’ occupational level; measured at Time 1) would contribute to CDSE (measured at Time 2). Results based on a two-wave survey of 235 college students showed that: (1) proactive personality positively predicted CDSE; (2) CSCC positively predicted CDSE; (3) CSCC partly mediated the relation between proactive personality and CDSE; (4) the positive effect of CSCC on CDSE was stronger among students with a lower family socioeconomic status. Individuals with strong proactive personalities were more likely to develop salience in career success criteria and in turn became more confident in making career decisions. Therefore, vocational educators in higher education could help to improve students’ CDSE by promoting training programs for proactive thinking, providing successful role models, and encouraging family involvement, especially for students with a lower family socioeconomic status.

How Do Students Become Good Workers? Investigating the Impact of Gender and School on the Relationship between Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy and Career Exploration

“…CDMSE can be defined as an individual's belief or confidence that they can make appropriate decisions related to their career development, and it has five dimensions: self-appraisal, gathering information, goal selection, planning, and problem-solving [25]. In various studies, CDMSE served as a crucial factor of an individual's vocational behaviors and outcomes [26][27][28][29], and these findings demonstrate a link between sustainable career development and CDMSE. A meta-analysis showed a positive relationship between CDMSE and career development and a negative relationship between CDMSE and career indecision [30].…”

“…According to Lent, personal and contextual factors affect CDMSE in a complexly interactive way [13]. For instance, given that a proactive personality positively predicts CDMSE, career educators could explore high-school students' difficulties in developing CDMSE by measuring this trait [26]. On the other hand, perceived support from influential and important people (e.g., family members) is likely to have more impact on CDMSE than other contextual factors, and this impact is more significant during adolescence [73]; therefore, it is essential to construct a bridge between high schools and parents, and high schools must strengthen parents' awareness about their children's sustainable career development rather than academic scores.…”

“…Future research should recruit students from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Moreover, other variables such as contextual indicators could also be tested as moderators [26]. Future research should consider other moderators in the relationship between CDMSE and CE.…”

Proactive Personality Measurement Using Item Response Theory and Social Media Text Mining

“…For career decision-making, it is proved that the career decisionmaking difficulties of college students are negatively predicted by proactive personality (He et al, 2020). Xin et al (2020) suggested that a strong proactive personality plays a prominent role in career success criteria, and individuals with strong proactive personalities have more confidence in making career decisions.…”

Impact of Future Time Perspective on Entrepreneurial Career Intention for Individual Sustainable Career Development: The Roles of Learning Orientation and Entrepreneurial Passion

“…Different from other career paradigms, the sustainable career perspective focuses explicitly and intensively on individual and contextual factors related to career management [6]. Entrepreneurial career decisions, particularly for the formation of entrepreneurial career intention, are emerging and important issues in sustainable career development research and practice [2,3,[7][8][9][10]. Entrepreneurial career intention refers to the intention to pursue a career in entrepreneurship.…”