Boosting Career Success: Innovative Behavioral Measures for Guiding Saudi Secondary School Graduates

This study developed and validated a comprehensive behavioral measure for career guidance among secondary school graduates in Saudi Arabia, aiming to integrate soft skills, personality traits, attitudes, and cognitive factors to fill gaps in existing career guidance frameworks. Using a cross-sectional design, data were collected from 814 secondary school students (M_age = 16.47) from diverse urban (n = 407) and rural (n = 407) settings in Saudi Arabia. Multigroup latent profile analyses (LPA) were employed to identify distinct career decision-making profiles among students. The study explored whether urban and rural students exhibited different patterns of engagement in career guidance behaviors. Three distinct engagement profiles were identified: high, moderate, and low engagement, consistent across both settings. High engagement profiles were characterized by high self-efficacy, proactive career exploration, and low anxiety, linked to better career decision outcomes and greater satisfaction with career guidance. Variance analysis using the Games-Howell post hoc test was conducted to compare the profiles based on key behavioral measures such as self-efficacy, career exploration behavior, and anxiety. To further understand the contextual factors influencing these profiles, a multinomial regression analysis examined the impact of teacher support and resilience on career guidance engagement levels. Results indicated that higher levels of teacher support and resilience significantly predicted membership in high engagement profiles. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating behavioral components into career guidance programs, particularly those tailored to address the specific needs of urban and rural students in Saudi Arabia, ultimately supporting the broader educational and workforce development goals of Vision 2030.