Changes in students’ career readiness during their studies at the university

Abstract

Career readiness refers to an individual’s orientation towards planning and building a career, encompassing beliefs, views, motives, feelings, attitudes, and a disposition towards behavior that ensures successful career development and alignment between personal expectations and those of the professional environment. It reflects the concentration of an individual’s efforts aimed at creating and implementing a career plan, which serves as a prerequisite for purposeful careerbuilding activity, as well as for its regulation and effectiveness. This study aimed to examine changes in career readiness among psychology students during their university studies. The participants included firstand fourth-year students of the Institute of Psychology at Herzen University, with a total sample size of 60 individuals. The following empirical methods were employed: the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF); E. Schein’s Career Anchors methodology for assessing value orientations in a career (translation and adaptation by V. A. Chiker and V. E. Vinokurov); and the Individual’s SocioPsychological Attitudes in the Motivational-Need Sphere Questionnaire by O. F. Potemkina. Student’s t-test was used to deto identify relationships between the variables. All calculations were performed using Statistica software (version 10). The analysis revealed that fourth-year students demonstrated a more developed emotional component of career readiness than first-year students. They were are also more oriented towards working with and serving people, striving to realize key life values in their work and to use their talents and experience as effectively as possible to achieve socially important goals. This indicates a higher degree of development of the cognitive component of career readiness. First-year students displayed a focus on money. Fourth-year students showed an orientation towards altruistic values, including helping others and self-sacrifice, reflecting a higher level of development of the motivational component of career readiness. The study indicates positive changes in psychology students’ career readiness during their studies at the university, including the formation of emotional, cognitive and motivational components of career readiness.