The impact of personality on career exploration behaviors of undergraduates: with special reference to university of Peradeniya

Abstract

Graduates are the one of the human capital resources of our country as they have the potential to determine the performance of an organization or a country (Hanapi & Nordin, 2013). Graduates transition from college to career is an important stage as it is going to decide their status, identity and self-esteem throughout their career decision. Accordingly, career exploration is the central construct to find out new jobs (Raveeswaran & Sivaskaran, 2016), graduates in this transition need career exploration behaviors. On the other hand, unemployment of graduates is one of the prominent issues that many countries currently struggling with (ILO’s Flagship report, 2018). The study of UNESCO (2012) states that the worldwide graduate unemployment rate has been increased to 6.2% in 2012. Further, Aina (2017) states that a high percentage of jobless youth contributes to the overall unemployment in Malaysia. By supporting the above view, Oluwajodu, et al., (2015) mention that graduate unemployment in South Africa appears to be rising together with the overall unemployment rate. In Sri Lanka, there are number of graduates unemployed in each year and they have formed unemployed graduates union for the purpose of finding government employment opportunities (Raveeswaran & Sivaskaran, 2016). Thus, the purpose of this study was to address the graduate unemployability issue in Sri Lanka. Moreover, Raveeswaran & Sivaskaran (2016) have mentioned that the activities of Sri Lankan unemployed graduates show that they are lack of career self-efficacy and career exploration behavior. Stumpf, et al., (1983) define career exploration as the individuals' activities of collecting and analyzing information on their personal characteristics, as well as information on jobs, organizations and occupations. Since graduates are vital for a countries performance (Hanapi & Nordin, 2013) it is essential to focus on the issue of graduates lacking career exploration behaviors. Among many factors personality has an important contribution in