کار یابی و کسب کار در دانش آموزان دبیرستانی

We surveyed 225 Year 9 and 10 students at T1 regarding their attitude, social norms, control, experience, plans and intentions to find a part-time job while at school. Of these, 149 did not have a job and were surveyed again four months later about their job-seeking and job outcomes (104 responded at T2). Job-seeking intentions at T1 were associated with past experience, plans and beliefs that getting a job was the right thing to do. Job-seeking at T2 was associated with beliefs about the value of job-seeking. Job interviews attended were related to job-seeking, and job offers were related to interviews attended. Students with higher job-seeking intentions and behaviours differed on most variables from students with lower intentions and behaviours. Students need to be aware of the relationship between job-seeking, interviews and offers, and be provided with strategies that increase their interviews and assist to manage unsuccessful job attempts.

It is increasingly common for adolescents to work in part-time paid jobs while still at school. In Australia, 34% of eligible students were working part-time in 1990. This figure was 42% in 2000 (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2002) and 50% in 2003 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2005). Australian students work an average of 11 h per week (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2002). Students benefit from part-time employment by earning money, making new friends, developing occupational skills and learning about the world of work (Curtis and Lewis, 2001 and Lucas and Lammont, 1998), although detrimental effects, such as impaired school performance and attendance and deteriorated relationships with family and friends, have also been noted, especially when students work long hours (Mortimer et al., 1996 and Vickers et al., 2003). Student employment also benefits employers, who, for example, find students easier to hire and fire than full-time workers, and more prepared to work unsociable hours (Lucas & Ralston, 1996). Thus, having a part-time job can be a significant activity in the student’s life and a key consideration for the economy. Understanding the influences on students that lead them to seek a part-time job is important as it can assist them with their employment goals and help them manage these first steps into work. The present study sought to identify the factors that led students to decide to search for a part-time job and to differentiate between those who were successful in this task and those who were not. Job-seeking is a “purposive, volitional… (behaviour) that begins with the identification and commitment to pursuing an employment goal” (Kanfer, Wanberg, & Kantrowitz, 2001, p. 838). It includes activities such as preparing a resume, reading job advertisements, contacting employers and going to job interviews. Job-seeking identifies the potential jobs that are available, has an important influence on whether the student becomes employed, and influences the quality of that employment (Kanfer et al.). Research has identified a wide range of antecedents to job-seeking in adults, including personality, generalized expectancies such as self-efficacy and locus of control, life history variables such as work experience and job-seeking experience, barriers such as a disability, financial obligations, social skills and social support, effort, intensity and presentation to prospective employers (Eden and Aviram, 1993, Gowan et al., 1999, Kanfer et al., 2001, van Hooft et al., 2003 and Wanberg et al., 1999). However, no study has investigated the predictors of job-seeking in students; where adolescents have been examined they have been college graduates, unemployed or job-to-job seekers (Kanfer et al.). The current study addressed this gap by examining the antecedents and consequences of job-seeking among high school students. We examined these antecedents and consequences in the context of Ajzen’s (1991) theory of planned behaviour (TPB). According to the TPB, the immediate determinant of behaviour is the person’s intention to perform it. Intention, in turn, is determined by the individual’s attitude (salient beliefs about whether the behaviour leads to a valued outcome), subjective norms (perceptions of social pressures), and perceived behavioural control over the behaviour. Perceived behavioural control taps beliefs about factors that may further or hinder performance, such as ability, resources, skills and the co-operation of others. As a general rule, the more favourable the attitude and subjective norm, and the greater the perceived control, the stronger is the individual’s intention to perform the behaviour (Ajzen, 1991). For behaviours under volitional control it is the combination of intentions and perceived behavioural control that predicts behaviour (Ajzen, 1991). The TPB has been useful in predicting a range of health and risk related behaviours, such as smoking, exercise and food choice (Armitage & Conner, 2001), and has been applied to predicting job-seeking in unemployed adults (van Hooft et al., 2003 and Vinokur and Caplan, 1987) and graduating college students (Caska, 1998). Vinokur and Caplan, for example, found that attitude and subjective norms were the main determinants of job-seeking intentions in unemployed adults, and that intention was, in turn, the main determinant of job-seeking. Caska found that job-seeking intentions and job-seeking were explained by attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control in graduating college students. Meta-analyses have shown that the TPB has been able to account for 40–50% of the variance in intentions, but that intentions and perceived behavioural control account for only 19–38% of the variance in behaviour (Sutton, 1998). Because of this discrepancy, other variables have been proposed to augment the TPB. We included three suggestions that appeared salient to job-seeking. The first of these was effects of past experience (Bagozzi, Baumgartmer, & Yi, 1992). Students who have past job-seeking experience, should, for example, have more accurate perceptions of their job-seeking self-efficacy and control than those with no job-seeking experience. The second was a broader measure of social norms (we included injunctive, descriptive and moral norms, i.e., others’ social approval/disapproval, what others might do, and personal rules of conduct; Conner & McMillan, 1999). For example, findings in the developmental literature suggest that adolescents may be influenced differently by parents and peers (Ianotti, Bush, & Weinfurt, 1996). We thus included the standard measure of subjective norms, as advocated by Ajzen (1991), as well as separate questions on the normative influence of parents, teachers and peers to enable assessment of a wider range of these referents. The third was implementation intentions, or having specific plans about the behaviour (Gollwitzer, 1993). Individuals are more likely to have stronger intentions and to carry out those intentions to perform a behaviour if they make a specific plan about when and where they will do it. Intentions commit a person to achieving a goal, whereas implementation intentions commit the person to executing the specific intended behaviour. Thus, from the TPB, and suggestions for its augmentation, we proposed four main hypotheses: (a) that job-seeking attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control would predict intentions to job-seek, (b) that past experience and implementation intentions would improve prediction of intentions to job-seek, (c) that intentions, perceived behavioural control, past experience and implementation intentions would predict subsequent job-seeking, and (d) that successful job-seeking students would differ from unsuccessful students on the TPB variables, past experience and implementation intentions.

This study addressed the gap in research on adolescent employment by examining the antecedents and consequences of job-seeking among school-aged children. Seventy-six of our original sample of 225 students reported already having a job. These students were older, and disproportionately girls. This is consistent with reports (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2002) that young adolescents engage in paid work as well as study at high school, and that girls working outnumber boys working. Only one student in our sample of “unemployed” adolescents indicated that he did not want paid employment, which reflects the importance of having a part-time job to this population, and underlines the value of research into this area. Consistent with previous studies that applied the TPB to job-seeking, this study demonstrated the usefulness of the theory in predicting job-seeking behaviours in adolescents. The TPB variables of attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control, as a group, were able to account for sizeable proportions of the variance in Job-seeking Intentions (40%) and Job-seeking at T2 (36%). The study also demonstrated that job-seeking in adolescents was an area where the theory can be successfully augmented by other, appropriate variables, as has been suggested by previous research (Conner & McMillan, 1999). The addition of Job-seeking Experience and Implementation Intentions accounted for substantial additional variance in Job-seeking intentions (23%) and Job-seeking (7%). The significant predictors of Job-seeking Intentions at T1 were Job-seeking Experience, Implementation Intentions and Moral Norms. These variables accounted for an impressive 63% of the variance. Having previous job-seeking experience and clear plans as to future job-seeking were the more important variables, although the contribution of Moral Norms highlights the importance of a moral dimension to having employment for adolescents. Despite being engaged in the full-time activity of education, these adolescents indicated a moral imperative for having a job as well. More research is required to examine these underlying values and identify their antecedents and influence. The students’ own view that finding a job was the “right thing to do” was more influential than the other normative pressures measured in the study, which supports suggestions that a broader perspective be taken when assessing the effects of social norms within the TPB. At a practical level, these results mean that young adolescents can be helped with their job-seeking if they receive training in the activities associated with job-seeking and planning. This training could include role-playing, which would give experience in job-seeking, and the strategic development about how, when and where to conduct a job-search. These skills are likely to be helpful later in life, as with the changing nature of the labour force and few “jobs for life”, students will be repeatedly called upon to look for work for themselves. This training is likely also to give the students a more accurate perception of their behavioural control and help to increase job-seeking self-efficacy at both the task and global level. The TPB variables were less successful at predicting actual job-seeking, although they still accounted for a creditable 36% of the variance. The theory is typically reported in the literature to be better at predicting intentions than actual behaviours. The explanations for this include error associated with same-time, self-report data, and changes in variables from T1, when intentions are typically measured, to T2, when measures of behaviours are taken (Armitage and Conner, 2001 and Conner and Armitage, 1998). Work Value made the only unique contribution, although Injunctive Norms and Task Self-efficacy, along with Job-seeking Experience and Implementation Intentions approached significance. So, whereas Job-seeking Experience, Implementation Intentions and Moral Norms were important predictors of Intentions to find work, Work Values were more associated with actual behaviours. Having students clarify their work values may be helpful for them when they think about getting a part-time job. Future research could also explore a wider range of work values, given that our measure was restricted to two items, and give further attention to social pressures, confidence, job-seeking experience and job-seeking plans, where there were trends towards significant contributions. Job-seeking Intention, when added to the regression analysis predicting Job-seeking at T2, did not add to the variance explained, indicating that Intention did not operate as a mediating variable between the TPB variables and actual job-seeking. Some previous research has reported that, in some circumstances, intentions may not mediate between attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and behaviour (Liska, 1984). These students had little job-seeking experience, which may have made it difficult for them to accurately plan the best process for job-seeking. It is possible that they intended to use certain methods, but that once these methods were put into practice, the feedback they received from others and their own experience caused them to re-evaluate their intended process. In this way, intention to job-seek at one point in time would not predict behaviour at a later point. Future research could fruitfully use methods other than surveys, for example, diaries, interviews or focus groups, to assess the relationship between intentions and behaviour from the students’ perspective. The important predictors of the Number of Job Interviews attended were job-seeking and school attended, accounting for 22% of the variance, whereas the important predictors of the Number of Job Offers were the Number of Job Interviews and School Achievement, accounting for 44% of the variance. These results are consistent with previous research with adults that indicates that more intense job-seeking leads to re-employment (Wanberg, 1997) and better quality re-employment (Kanfer et al., 2001). Attending an independent school, rather than a State-run school, was associated with some advantage in obtaining a job interview, but not with obtaining a job. Independent schools in Australia are typically denominational schools, and charge fees to attend. Employers may perceive an advantage to themselves to interview students from these schools, or students from these schools may have better access to employer contacts, either via parents or the school. However, the results from this study suggest that employers are selecting students on merit, rather than giving an advantage to a particular school sector. The implications here are that students need to be made aware of the relationship between job-seeking, job interviews and job offers, be provided with strategies to increase the number of job interviews they get, and perhaps be provided with mechanisms to manage unsuccessful approaches to, or interviews with, employers so that they do not give up on their search. Particular attention needs to be given to the less able students who may be disadvantaged in the job-seeking process and be seen as less employable by employers. Consistent with this relationship between job-seeking and job interviews/job offers, we found important differences between students who had high Job-seeking intentions and those with low intentions. Those with stronger intentions reported a more positive attitude to job-seeking, were more confident about it, and had clearer plans. They also reported more social pressure to get a job and had put more effort into previous job-seeking. These differences were maintained when students were asked about their job-seeking at T2. Students who reported more job-seeking at T2 had stronger intentions at T1, were more confident, had clearer plans and reported more social pressure. These students also participated in more job interviews and received more job offers, and it was the students who received more job interviews who reported more offers of a job. In addition to the limitations to the study already mentioned, it must be remembered we relied on self-report measures. This may have led to common method variance problems, although, in an attempt to reduce the influence of this, we conducted focus groups prior to the development and administration of the survey, tested the factorial independence of the scales used, and provided clear explanations to the students and their teachers about the need for honest responses. We also collected data across a small number of schools, none of which had advanced career education programs. The results found in this study need to be replicated in other situations. We were not able to differentiate among the different job-seeking strategies used by the students to carry out their intentions. Future research could profitably monitor the job-seeking process in more detail to gain insight into both the time and quality of the job-seeking undertaken, and its effect. Finally, studies on adult unemployment consistently demonstrate that unemployment increases the risk of poor mental health, in terms of increased depression, anxiety, minor psychiatric morbidity and decreases in self-esteem and life satisfaction (McKee-Ryan, Song, Wanberg, & Kinicki, 2005). Most of the students (63%) were unsuccessful in finding a job over the time period of this study, even though they engaged in job-seeking activities. Future research needs to examine the consequences of an unsuccessful job-search on adolescent well-being, and determine its effect on the students’ future job-seeking and their perception of their prospects in the labour market.