The Role of Self-Monitoring and Academic Effort in Students’ Career Adaptability and Job Search Self-Efficacy

This article examines the relationship between career adaptability, self-monitoring, academic effort, and job search self-efficacy among university students. Guided by the career construction and self-monitoring theories, we propose that self-monitoring mediates the relationship between career adaptability and job search self-efficacy. Furthermore, we hypothesize that the indirect relationship is stronger for those with high academic effort. We test our proposed model using two samples (Sample 1 = 340, Sample 2 = 547) of university students from Thailand. Results confirm our hypothesized relationships and suggest that career adaptability is positively associated with job search self-efficacy above and beyond the effects of gender. Moderated mediation analyses revealed that the conditional indirect effect of career adaptability in predicting job search self-efficacy via self-monitoring is stronger for students with high as opposed to low levels of academic effort. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.