The impact of future work self on perceived employability and career distress

Abstract

Future work self is a promising concept to understand how young people view and plan their careers in the contemporary workplace. In this study, we attempt to investigate its impacts on two career-related outcomes, namely, perceived employability and career distress. Informed by social cognitive career theory, we also explore the mediating role of career decision self-efficacy in the above relationships. Several hypotheses were developed and tested with a sample of 208 final-year undergraduate students (with a mean age of 21.5 and 145 of them are female) in China. The results of structural equation modeling and bootstrapping indicated that future work self has a positive relationship with perceived employability and a negative relationship with career distress, while these relationships are found to be mediated by career decision self-efficacy. Our study has advanced our understanding about how future work self contributes to career-related well-being among Chinese students.

Linking undergraduates’ future work self and employability: a moderated mediation model

“…Scholars have also suggested that the perception of employability is influenced by self-concept [ 34 ]. In other words, students’ personal traits play a significant role in predicting their future employability perception [ 35 ]. When students become job seekers, they begin to focus more on their future career direction than before and are concerned about their future employability [ 36 ].…”