No More gaps: Getting from Employable to Employed
11/01/2018
Jason Brown is the manager of La Trobe University’s Careers and Employability service and the main architect of La Trobe’s innovative approach to employability, Career Ready. Jason is also a PhD student investigating how employability programs and curricula design can influence students' engagement in career adaptive behaviours and lead to improvement in their graduate outcomes. In this article, Jason explains how, to have the greatest impact on student success, the notion of employability must be seen as more than just a set of skills.
by Melissa B. Cortez on Unsplash
Much of the discourse to do with graduate employability is around the mismatch between skills held by individuals and the skills sought by employers. Business groups seem to regularly tell governments and universities that they need to do more to improve the skills of graduates. So, to test this skills deficit argument, let’s look at how employers recruit and select graduates, and the employment outcomes of graduates.
How graduates get jobs
Firstly, employers’ recruitment methods. There doesn’t seem to be a great focus on objectively assessing skills. According to Graduate Careers Australia (GCA), the most frequently used selection methods are panel interviews (54.2%), reference checks (45.5%), behavioural-based interviews (43.9%), university qualification checks (35.7%), telephone interviews (30%), aptitude testing (28.6%), and skills based interviews (24.8%).
Secondly, selection criteria also do not show a concern that graduates must have exactly matching skills. GCA found that interpersonal and communication skills was the most important selection criteria for 58.3% of employers. Next was cultural alignment/values fit (34.3%), emotional intelligence (26.2%), reasoning and problem-solving skills (22.6%), academic results (19.6%), work experience (19.1%), and technical skills (14.4%).
Thirdly, when we look at the attributes of graduates, the argument for graduates possessing the right skills also looks a bit tenuous. Denise Jackson analysed data from over 20,000 graduates and found that traditional job search methods (283%), networking (53%), and attending a top university (38%) increased a graduates’ chances of obtaining employment more than having highly developed skills (19%).
So, if the reality is that employers are looking more broadly at candidates, then the skills-based view of employability doesn’t really help us support our clients to land a new job. Fortunately, there are other views of employability.
Perceived employability
Perceived employability is concerned with how individuals judge their chance of obtaining employment. They make these judgements from signals in the environment, like the number of job advertisements in their area of interest, the reputation of the university they attend, personal attributes, and self-belief. Individuals who perceive their chances are low in obtaining employment are less likely to apply for jobs compared to people more confident in their chances. As career practitioners, we can change our clients’ perception of their employability through career exploration activities, sharing success stories from individuals like themselves, and strategies that build self-efficacy around job search. Universities can focus on improving their reputation with employers and the quality of their teaching.
Dispositional employability
Dispositional employability sees employability as emanating from an individual’s characteristics that enable proactive behaviours leading to employment outcomes. Underlying dispositional employability are career identity, personal adaptability, and social and human capital. Our clients who are less proactive can be supported through scaffolding activities to engage in career adaptive behaviours, like networking, acquiring new skills and knowledge, and researching career options as a way of enhancing career identity. To do this, universities can include work-integrated learning and careers and employability learning in the curriculum.
Taking a broader view of employability, career practitioners can delve into their toolbag of evidence-based interventions and assist their clients to shift from being employable to being employed.
This blog post is a summary of a presentation delivered by Jason Brown at the CDAA Victorian Spring Seminar 2017. The slides from this presentation are available on Slideshare.