The Structural Relationship among Career-Related Mentoring, Ambiguity Tolerance, and Job Search Effort and Behavior of Korean College Students

Yangyi Kwon,Andrew Keane,Jhong Yun (Joy) Kim

doi:10.3390/su12218834

Yangyi Kwon, Andrew Keane + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su12218834

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Abstract

Although a substantial body of mentoring research has been conducted on students attending four-year colleges, the interplay of career-related mentoring, ambiguity tolerance, and job search effort and behavior has not been seriously investigated. Therefore, we examined the relationship between career-related mentoring and ambiguity tolerance, as well as job search effort and behavior, for the purpose of understanding how to better assist undergraduate college students achieve preliminary job search success. Data were collected via pencil surveys administered to 300 undergraduate students selected by purposive sampling from four colleges in Seoul, Korea. Correlation analysis and covariance structure analysis were conducted to examine the relationships between variables. A Sobel test was also conducted to check the mediation effect of the model. Results were consistent with our hypotheses and showed that there was a significant, indirect, positive effect of career-related mentoring on job search effort and behavior, mediated through ambiguity tolerance. Our study contributes to career-related mentoring and job search research by providing empirical evidence supporting the results. It has implications for universities, mentoring program design, and career guidance professionals.

Highlights

Job searching is an important part of life, and individuals often seek new career opportunities as opposed to being unemployed [1]
The result showed that this research model with four factors of career-related mentoring variables, three factors of ambiguity tolerance, and three factors of job search effort and behavior provides a good fit to the data (χ2 = 57.2**, degrees of freedom = 32, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = 0.971, Tucker-Lewis Index(TLI) = 0.950, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = 0.056)
To understand how to better assist undergraduate college students in achieving preliminary job search success, we examined the structural relationships among career-related mentoring, ambiguity tolerance, and job search effort and behavior

Summary

Introduction

Job searching is an important part of life, and individuals often seek new career opportunities as opposed to being unemployed [1]. Undergraduate university students, aged approximately 18–25, are still in the process of completing their education and preparing themselves for entering the job market. According to Arnett [2], adults in this age group search for jobs requiring substantial preliminary experience, as they see knowledge about their future role as essential for a life-long career. Young adults today spend more time preparing for jobs than in previous generations [6]. This engagement with the job search process is stimulated through mentoring and psychosocial support [7]

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