Abstract:

Psychological resilience is regarded as a crucial variable in dealing with certain personal and structural obstacles. Individuals with strong psychological foundation face many difficulties in their careers, but they are successful in coping with them. University years are a period in which there are significant changes in the career lines of an individual. During this period, individuals may experience various adaptation problems as they are at a challenging and critical stage that is the transition from school to business life. While some college students are able to cope appropriately and constructively with the problems of this difficult transition, others may struggle in this process. Students may experience intense tension when trying to balance their needs, developmental tasks, and academic responsibilities. In addition, in research on psychological resilience or determination, university students are considered as individuals in risk group. For this reason, psychological resilience, which is defined as being able to stay mentally strong, adapt and cope despite all the difficulties encountered, is believed to have an important place in explaining the career adaptation of university students.

Career adjustment gives individuals the power to self-regulate in solving complex problems arising from developmental tasks, career transitions, and work traumas. Since career adaptation skills are psychosocial attitudes and competencies, these skills can also change and improve. Thus they are areas of interest to career counselors. Career adjustment is a psychosocial structure that shows the individual resources to perform they current duties, foresees major or small changes in life, work transition and traumas, and ensures the social integration of the individual. This concept can be approached in several ways, depending on environmental conditions. Career development environment is highly correlated with career adaptation. According to Savickas and Porfeli (2012), career adaptation is the psychosocial structure which reflects the individual resources that a person uses to overcome challenges such as developmental tasks and work transitions, which are an inevitable part of life.

Psychological resilience has been one of the main important concepts in the fields of career development and occupational psychology and in the job market in order to understand why and how people who are able to cope with negative and stressful situations related to their career, such as changing jobs, achieve this. Therefore, psychological resilience is now being further explored in the field of career development.

The aim of this study is to reveal the relationship between psychological resilience and career adaptability for 850 students in different faculties in universities in Istanbul with the structural equation model. As a result of the analysis, psychological resilience and career adaptability were determined to be positively significantly related. This result was in line with the literature and revealed the importance of psychological semblance in young people in the career path.

Keywords:

Psychological Resilience, Career Adaptability, University Students, Statistical Analysis.