EXPLORING JOB SEARCH BEHAVIORS AND ATTITUDES AMONG RECENT UNIVERSITY GRADUATES IN ECUADOR

The labor market transition of young adults from higher education is an important issue for young Latin American graduates, and specifically for Ecuador, given that there is a complex relationship between structural labor market conditions and individual competences and capacities that shape the ability of young adults to enter and stay in the labor market. This study aimed to explore the attitudes and behaviors of the job search of 395 graduates of a university in Ecuador, considering gender, academic specialization, employment status, and expectations. A quantitative, non-experimental descriptive-correlational design was used. An ad hoc sociodemographic questionnaire and the Job Search Evaluation Questionnaire (CEBE; in Spanish) were used to gather data. No significant gender differences in any of the three dimensions of job search (SIFI, ICBE, COMOBE) were found in the results, suggesting that job search strategies were homogeneous between sexes. Despite some differences between groups, they were apparent by employment status, with employed graduates having higher scores on facilitating systems (SIFI, p = .021), and unemployed graduates having higher scores on search intensity (ICBE, p < .001). In the field of academic discipline, only motivated job search behaviors (COMOBE) were found to be significantly different between Exact and Natural Sciences and Social Sciences, Education and Humanities (p = .025). Finally, graduates whose career expectations were fulfilled had higher scores on facilitating systems (SIFI, p < .001) and lower scores on the search intensity (ICBE, p = .002). These results validate the notion that the dynamics of the job search process can only be explained through a multidetermined choice of factors from a contextual and person-centered perspective. The results of this study offer useful information to universities and labor insertion programmes for the development of more targeted interventions and intervention areas on socio-personal competencies that are specific to a person's life.