Self-efficacy is our personal perception of our ability to succeed in specific situations we encounter in our day-to-day lives and is a quality that, with effort, can improve over time with training and practice. As a pilot program, we’re interested in knowing how confident our FirstGen Ahead students are on a number of factors that can impact their ability to work with a career coach and transition from college to career. As such, an online pre-test was completed by all ten FirstGen Ahead students to assess their levels of confidence related to working with a career coach, understanding themselves, career research & planning, and soft (e.g. networking) and technical skills (e.g. preparing a strong resume). In total, there were 26 question that were answered on a 5-point scale (1=least confident; 5=most confident).
On most questions, the majority of students rated themselves at 4 or 5, meaning they had stronger confidence in their abilities. This is good news! It’s the areas where the student average was 3.3 or less (not as confident) that additional support is needed.
