The paradoxical effect of new college graduates’ employability on career decision-making difficulties

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to establish a moderated mediation model to examine the paradoxical effect of new college graduates’ employability on their career decision-making difficulties, with the mediating role of perceived overqualification. We also examined the moderating role of perceived COVID-19 crisis strength to strengthen this mediating relationship. Design/methodology/approach Based on the person-environment fit theory, a time-lagged survey was conducted with a sample of 398 new college graduates from five universities in China. The structural equation modeling method was used to test the theoretical hypotheses. Findings The results show that employability directly and negatively affects career decision-making difficulties among new college graduates. However, employability also indirectly and positively affects career decision-making difficulties through perceived overqualification. Moreover, the perceived COVID-19 crisis strength acted as a boundary condition to moderate this positive mediated relationship. Practical implications While employability can be beneficial for new college graduates, our findings also remind new graduates and college career coaches to be aware of the potential dark side of employability and the changing employment environment. Originality/value Prior work has focused on the positive effects of new college graduates’ employability on their career decision-making. Based on the person–environment fit theory, we adopted a three-wave time-lagged research design, theoretically derived and empirically tested the paradoxical effect mechanism of college students’ employability on their career decision-making difficulties. Our study contributes to the theoretical advancement of employability research while offering higher education institutions a holistic framework for enhancing new college graduates’ employability.