This study examines the associations between perceived social support, career adaptability, career decision-making self-efficacy, and career satisfaction among Chinese college graduates in their early careers. The research sample consisted of 571 Chinese college graduates who had job experience ranging from 6 months to 5 years. The sample included individuals with different educational backgrounds, including junior college graduates, bachelor’s degrees, and postgraduates. There were no limitations imposed on the participants’ field of major or work. The Chinese version of the Perceived Social Support Scale, the 12-item Career Adapt-Ability Scale-Short Form, the Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale, and the Career Satisfaction Scale were used for evaluating the study variables. Using Smart-PLS analysis, the findings suggest that perceived social support, career adaptability, career decision-making self-efficacy, and career satisfaction of Chinese college graduates at the beginning of their careers are positively correlated with each other. Moreover, career adaptability and career decision-making self-efficacy were found to play a mediating role, and a chain mediation effect exists. The results contribute to the development of a strategy to enhance the career adaptability of college students and individuals at the beginning of their working lives and to increase career satisfaction.

Based on the Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC) and control model, the Motivational Theory of Life-Span Development (MTLSD) proposes adaptive development criteria and objectives. It asserts that the pursuit of perpetual development is the primary control and that the life cycle is an action field with an opportunity and constraint structure of time organization. Opportunity is a process characterized by the change processes of escalating and waning and by the adaptation consistency processes of goal participation and goal separation. The MTLSD has endeavored to elucidate how people actively promote their own personal lifelong development throughout its entirety. This provides illumination for China’s career education. The importance of individual initiative in career development, the process of opportunity in the continuity of career education, the difference of career education in different career (major) life cycles, and the fairness of career education during the transitional period of social mobility (opportunity) must be emphasized.

There are currently three main career education paradigms, namely the matching-oriented career guidance paradigm, the development-oriented career guidance paradigm, and the construction-oriented life design paradigm. Different career education paradigms have different understandings of career, educational subjects, educational purposes, and educational strategies. Compared with the first two paradigms, the life design paradigm, which originated in the postmodern society, aims to cultivate students’ ability to actively construct and manage their own careers to cope with the uncertain VUCA era and has a greater enlightening effect on the development of career education courses. In terms of educational concepts, there is a shift from static “person-job fit” to dynamic “career construction”, focusing on the subjective initiative of students in career development and the continuous constructiveness of situations on students’ career development. In terms of curriculum objectives, it focuses on students’ initiative, narrative and adaptive development. In terms of curriculum content, starting from the theme of students’ career development, it integrates related content such as self-awareness, environmental exploration, decision-making planning, psychology, interpersonal relationships, etc., emphasizing the design of content that is coherent as whole. In terms of course implementation, the problem-solving career education steps provide a reference for classroom teaching and pay more attention to the use of indirect and direct experience mixed methods such as metaphor, life story, role model, career practice, etc. In terms of course evaluation, attention should be paid to the construction of the fractal model of the intervention effect, and indicators such as students’ career adaptability, hope, and career exploration should be given particular attention.