Career transitions of college seniors.

In a study with 191 college students, canonical correlation analysis explored career search self-efficacy and psychological distress (career search set) in relation to psychological resources and regulatory focus (career transition set), producing 2 significant canonical correlations. The 1st correlation dimension showed that decreased career search self-efficacy and increased psychological distress had a moderate relationship with decreased psychological resources and minimal relationship with low promotion focus and high prevention focus. The 2nd dimension illustrated that the increase in anxiety and personal exploration efficacy were associated with increased readiness for the career transition and elevated prevention focus.

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Career search is one of the most important tasks that graduating college students face. For many of these students, this is the first time that they will look for a full-time job or a career path that will become a part of their identity. In addition, this first experience of career search may serve as a basis for their future job search strategies, especially given the recent trend of career changes in adulthood that are caused by rapid shifts in the meaning of career and large layoffs resulting from mergers, downsizing, technological changes, or globalization (Gysbers, Heppner, & Johnston, 2003).

Vigorous research on career search has been conducted to increase understanding of the search process and outcome. In particular, career search self-efficacy, or self-appraised confidence in successfully performing a variety of career search activities (Solberg, Good, Fischer, Brown, & Nord, 1995), has been consistently identified as a construct that predicts career search behaviors and outcome (Kanfer, Wanberg, & Kantrowitz, 2001; Solberg et al., 1995). Moreover, self-efficacy for different career search activities appears to diversify career search behaviors. For example, literature about differentiating networking, or informal career search activities, from formal career search activities has indicated the importance of networking efficacy on the range of career search activities used by individuals (Wanberg, Kanfer, & Banas, 2000).

More recent studies have incorporated affective aspects of career search as a response to the scarcity of affect in previous studies. Although research has been conducted to explain the causal relationship between psychological distress and career search, only equivocal findings have been presented (Cote, Saks, & Zikic, 2006; Crossley & Stanton, 2005). The traditional approach proposed that failure in career search leads to physical and psychological distress (Murphy & Athanasou, 1999). Yet others have argued that decreased psychological well-being affects subsequent career search behavior (Hamilton, Hoffman, Broman, & Rauma, 1993; Taris, 2002).

Specifically, the relationship between affect and career search has been investigated, using career search self-efficacy as a mediator (Crossley & Stanton, 2005). Crossley and Stanton elaborated the research design by differentiating traitlike negative affect and statelike psychological distress as assessed by levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. In their study with graduating college students, they found that career search self-efficacy mediated only the relationship between traitlike negative affect and career search success, not the relationship between statelike psychological distress and career search success. This is an interesting finding, because psychological distress was expected to create self-doubt and to lower self-efficacy in general (Wood & Bandura, 1989). More interesting, a direct, positive relationship between psychological distress and career search success was also observed, although the explanation for this relationship could not be explained clearly.

These studies suggest that career search self-efficacy and psychological distress are closely related to how individuals handle career search tasks, and, yet, these constructs seem to be independent of each other. High career search self-efficacy consistently predicts positive career search behaviors and outcome, whereas the role of psychological distress in relation to career search self-efficacy and outcome appears to be more complicated. Generally, psychological distress is associated with negative career search outcome, whether that distress is a cause or result of unsuccessful career search; psychological distress is hypothetically expected to be related to low career search self-efficacy. However, Crossley and Stanton's (2005) study indicated that it is the more stable, traitlike negative affect that is mediated by career search self-efficacy, whereas psychological distress itself may have a direct positive relationship with successful career search outcome.