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).