The Relationship between Work Experience and Career Expectations: Career Decision-Making Self-efficacy as Mediator

Educational experiences include coursework and career development activities offered by the educational institution, which contribute to students' self-efficacy. In an academic discipline such as hospitality and tourism, students frequently get practical work experience(s) to build up their self-efficacy. This study surveyed hospitality students to examine the mediation role of the five subfactors of career decision-making self-efficacy in the relationship between work experience and career expectations. All five sub-factors of self-efficacy are significant and positive mediators of the relationship between work experience and career expectations. The mediation results provide possibilities for hospitality educators to combine the work or internship experiences with assignments or exercises to help students build their self-efficacy and better understand the interrelationship of the two. An example assignment is comparing and contrasting what is learned in the classroom with a work or internship experience.