Because of demographic change and the resulting shortage of skilled workers in many European countries it becomes increasingly important to prevent young people from wasting years switching jobs or training courses, and instead to secure their smooth transition from school into further education and the labor market respectively. This is especially relevant for young people who only have access to a limited range of opportunities in the training market. In Germany this applies mainly to students who leave school at the end of compulsory education, i.e. after grade nine (approx. 20% of all graduates). Until recently they seldom got offered an apprenticeship leading to a vocational qualification right away, as employers prefer to train students with higher educational attainment. However, due to the shrinking number of applicants for apprenticeships, employers are beginning to consider these lesser qualified young people as potential apprentices. To use this altered situation to their advantage, young people need to select and begin applying for apprenticeships early enough before graduating. In order to be successful in this endeavor, they need to amass knowledge about the world of work in general and about vocational pathways of their interest in particular. Gathering this career-relevant knowledge is usually referred to as “career exploration” and can be seen as a ”typical example(…) of positive career choice readiness attitudes” according to Hirschi (2007, p.207). Osipow (1999) and Hirschi (2011) stress that lack of occupational information is, among others (such as lack of self-knowledge or external barriers), one important potential source of a person’s incapacity to make career decisions, and this can be addressed by intensifying career exploration. At the same time the decision-making process is influenced by personal characteristics of the adolescent in the orientation phase. Creed et al. (2005) discovered that low self-esteem and life satisfaction are related to career indecision in students. While they interpreted their findings in the direction that self-esteem results from the decisional state, one could, along with Hirschi (2011), also presume, that students low in self-esteem have difficulties in deciding for a career, which might result from reduced career exploration.

As the readiness to make career decisions depends on the amount of occupational information available to a person and as students with a low readiness for career decisions show lowered self-esteem (Hirschi, 2011), one can assume that students low in self-esteem are undecided, because they possess not enough career information to form a decision and that this might result from a lesser engagement in career exploration. Another reason why adolescents low in self-esteem might not engage in extensive career exploration can be derived from Super et al. (1990), who postulate that individuals low in self-esteem do not try to implement their self-concept in the vocation they choose as much as those high in self-esteem, which was supported empirically by Korman (1966). It seems likely that students low in self-esteem are less motivated to put much effort into working out which potential careers match their interests. Research now needs to examine whether students low in self-esteem actually show less career exploration than their peers high in self-esteem.  This should be especially true for exploring information sources that are not easily accessible, since Ellis and Taylor (1983) argued for the case of job seekers that individuals low in self-esteem searching a job would rather resort to sources not requiring social skill and initiative. I therefore expect students low in self-esteem to a) feel less prepared for career decisions and b) rely to a lesser degree on career exploration than students high in self-esteem and that these differences will be greatest for information sources requiring social interaction.

Creed, P., Prideaux, L.-A., & Patton, W. (2005). Antecedents and consequences of career decisional states in adolescence. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 67, 397-412. Ellis, R. A., & Taylor, M. S. (1983). Role of self-esteem within the job search process. Journal of Applied Psychology, 68(4), 632-640. Hirschi, A. (2011). Career-choice readiness in adolescence: Developmental trajectories and individual differences. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 79, 340-348. Hirschi, A., & Läge, D. (2007). Holland's secondary constructs of vocational interests and career choice readiness of secondary students: Measures for related but different constructs. Journal of Individual Differences, 28(4), 205-218. Korman, A. K. (1966). Self-esteem variable in vocational choice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 50, 479-486. NEPS (2013). https://www.neps-data.de/en-us/projectoverview.aspx, retrieved 30th January 2014. Osipow, S. H. (1999). Assessing career indecision. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 55, 147-154. Super, D. E., Savickas, M. L., & Super, C. M. (1996). The life-span, life-space approach to careers. In D. Brown & L. Brooks (Eds.), Career choice and development. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.