Currently, higher vocational education focuses on professional skill cultivation and pays insufficient attention to students’ career development ability, which leads to a gap between the employment quality of graduates and their personal expectations. Based on the time-series data analysis method, this paper uses structural equation modeling to explore the dynamic interactive relationship between students’ career aspirations and resilience in higher vocational colleges. The study targeted students from five higher vocational colleges and universities in a city and collected data through questionnaires, 1000 questionnaires were distributed and the effective recovery rate reached 81.7%. The results of the study showed that career resilience was significantly positively correlated with career ambition fulfillment, with a path coefficient of 0.855 (p<0.01); the path coefficient of employment preparation and career ambition fulfillment was 0.916 (p<0.01), indicating that there was a stronger positive correlation between the two; and that employment preparation played a significant mediating role between career resilience and career ambition fulfillment, with a mediating effect value of 0.525 (p<0.001). Based on the findings of the study, we propose strategies to improve career adaptability at three levels: schools should improve the career planning guidance system, strengthen practical teaching and school-enterprise cooperation, and innovate teaching methods and contents; students should improve their self-knowledge, enhance their comprehensive qualities, and formulate reasonable plans; and the society needs to optimize the employment environment and create a good social atmosphere to promote the career development of higher vocational students.
