Coping with career Insecurity: Investigating early career resources and strategies

Evoking stress among individuals in the early career stage, career insecurity was examined in this study based on four dimensions: employment environment, professional education training, career opportunities, and contractual employment conditions. The relations between career insecurity and coping strategies (i.e., avoidance and approach) were assessed, with ambiguity tolerance (i.e., aversion to ambiguity) considered to play a moderating role in these relationships. The indirect effects of career insecurity on psychological wellbeing and subjective career success were also tested via the mediating roles of coping strategies. Survey data were collected among early career individuals from Italy, Norway, Bangladesh, and Indonesia using a two-wave study design (N = 492). The results of the moderation analyses showed that aversion to ambiguity strengthened the positive relationship between the employment environment dimension of career insecurity and avoidance coping. Additionally, the path analyses results found both coping strategies to mediate different associations between the four career insecurity dimensions and the two measured outcomes. The study findings offer both theoretical and practical implications, especially in managing young people's career insecurity as they progress further in their professional development amidst the precarious nature of modern careers.