Career Adaptability and Self-Efficacy in the process of job seeking Comparison between Belgium and Germany regarding the influence of Job Experience and Job Search Experience on Career Adaptability and Job Search Self-Efficacy for Master's students and recent graduates.

In our increasingly complex and unpredictable world of labour, psychological resources such as Career Adaptability and Job Search Self-Efficacy become more and more precious for workers and job seekers. Therefore, many studies have been conducted on antecedents of Career Adaptability and Job Search Self- Efficacy. However, only few is known about how this data is impacted by the individual’s history . Hence, this study investigated the relation between Career Adaptability and Job Search Self-Efficacy with the individually differing Job Experience and Job Search Experience of almost and recent graduates. Furthermore, in the spirit of globalization, the role of international differences has been explored by comparing Belgium and Germany. The results of this study suggest that there are only few associations between the investigated variables: First, contradictory to the current literature, Job Search Experience seems to be negatively related to Job Search Self-Efficacy. Then, as expected, German students seem to have more Job Experience than Belgian students. Lastly, the results give indication that the relation between nationality and Career Adaptability might be mediated by Job Search Experience.