Careers in Disarray? COVID-19 and Self-Perceived Employability

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced disruptions to the employment and higher education contexts, exacerbating complexities involved in one’s assessment of their opportunities of employment in these contexts. The career literature has largely overlooked a vulnerable population of potential job candidates (i.e., final-year MBA students) who are at a critical juncture in response to COVID-19 career shock. Drawing from the challenge-hindrance appraisal framework, this research aims to theorize and test a moderated-mediation model in terms of how COVID-19 career shock associates with self-perceived employability. We use a simple random sampling procedure to collect data from 301 final year MBA students in Australia at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings show that COVID-19 career shock can be perceived both as a challenge and a hindrance, which in turn associates with self-perceived employability differently. Results further demonstrate that the extent to which COVID-19 career shock is perceived as a challenge or hindrance is moderated by one’s career networking behavior. This research is a timely response to research calls for understanding how the COVID-19 has an impact on people’s work and career with a particular focus on a vulnerable yet under-studied group of labor force in the career literature.