Graduates’ career calling and employment anxiety: Job-seeking clarity and career decision-making self-efficacy as chain mediators

We investigated the impact of college graduates’ sense of career calling on their job-seeking anxiety, and examined job-seeking clarity and career decision-making self-efficacy as mediators of this relationship. Participants were 2,049 graduate students who completed the Career Calling Scale, the Job-Seeking Clarity Scale, the Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale, and the Employment Anxiety Scale. Results showed that sense of career calling, job-seeking clarity, and career decision-making self-efficacy were all significantly and negatively correlated with and predicted employment anxiety. Job-seeking clarity and career decision-making self-efficacy acted as chain mediators of the link between sense of career calling and employment anxiety. Sense of career calling affected employment anxiety both directly and also indirectly through job-seeking clarity and career decision-making self-efficacy. These results suggest that educational work centered on cultivating college students’ sense of career calling, job-seeking clarity, and career decision-making self-efficacy has important practical significance for reducing employment anxiety.