Emotional Intelligence and Employability of College Students: The Mediating Effect of Self-efficacy

Employability of college graduates plays a critical role in personal career success, organizational competitive advantage and sustainable national strength. Based on the questionnaire survey and quantitative analysis of 646 final-year college students from 9 higher education institutions in the Chinese mainland, the research found that the levels of regulation of emotion, self-efficacy (including both effort and context factors) and application of knowledge of male college students were significantly higher of than those of females. College students from urban areas had higher levels of overall emotional intelligence (including the dimension of appraisal and expression of emotion) and overall employability (including the sub-factors: teamwork, communication and coordination, self-learning, and self-management) than their rural counterparts. Model 4 of PROCESS Version 3.5 was adopted to test the total effect, direct effect and indirect effect between emotional intelligence, self-efficacy and employability. Results showed that emotional intelligence had a significant impact on the employability of college students and self-efficacy played a mediating role in the correlation between emotional intelligence and undergraduates’ employability. The findings could be of value to stakeholders of higher education to develop targeted measures to improve students’ employability.