Career resources and securing quality work
Graduate perspectives
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21458666 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Denise Jackson (0000-0002-7821-3394, Edith Cowan University, corresponding author), Claire Lambert (0000-0002-0020-2599, Edith Cowan University), Matalena Tofa (0000-0003-4976-9673, University of Wollongong), Ruth Bridgstock (0000-0003-0072-2815, Chancellery, Swinburne University of Technology), Ruth Sibson (0000-0002-4722-5034, Edith Cowan University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 436-456 |
| Publication date | 2025-05-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Studies in Continuing Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0158-037X • E-ISSN: 1470-126X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/0158037x.2024.2410182 |
| OpenAlex | W4403146266 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 51 |
Empowering graduates to secure quality post-graduation employment is a key goal for higher education institutions and their students. University support in developing career resources may aid transition to work by enhancing social support and networks, fostering a strong sense of professional self, promoting career self-management, and instilling career confidence. Yet there lacks empirical understanding of these resources and the role they play, including how they interrelate, how they vary by personal characteristics, and how they are developed. This study examines how graduates fare in the labour market, characterises their career resources, and explores the relationship between career resources and graduate-level employment. These insights will contribute to theoretical understanding of building employability and inform effective employability programmes in higher education. The mixed-method approach encompasses an online survey of 324 bachelor graduates of Australian universities, followed by focus groups to further explore participants’ experiences. Employed graduates felt that their work did not align adequately with their degree-based knowledge and skills. Those with greater career confidence, social support, and career self-management experienced better outcomes, with these resources showing strong interconnections. Universities should consider a multi-faceted approach in developing employability, addressing multiple dimensions of career resources from the beginning of students’ degrees
Career development · Engineering ethics · Graduate education · Graduate students · Job satisfaction · Medical education · Pedagogy · Sociology · Work environment · Engineering · Higher Education and Employability · Higher Education Learning Practices · Human Resource and Talent Management · Medicine · Psychology · Social Psychology
Narrating career, positioning identity
Avoiding the manufacture of ‘sameness’
Employability
The graduate attributes we’ve overlooked
The Dunning–Kruger Effect
Developing pre-professional identity in undergraduates through work-integrated learning
Forms of graduate capital and their relationship to graduate employability
Protean attitude and career success
Subjective career success
Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling by Rex B. Kline
Graduate employability and student attitudes and orientations to the labour market
Common method biases in behavioral research
Students’ views about the purpose of higher education
Towards praxis
Employability-related activities beyond the curriculum
Investigating the relationship between career planning, proactivity and employability perceptions among higher education students in uncertain labour market conditions
Provisional Selves
Navigating the graduate labour market
Construction and operationalisation of an Employability Capital Growth Model (ECGM) via a systematic literature review (2016–2022)
Predictors of success in the era of the boundaryless career
I changed my strategy and looked for jobs on Gumtree’
Shades of grey
South Asian Postgraduate International Students’ Employability Barriers
Using thematic analysis in psychology
Conservation of resources
Careers and employability learning
Professional identity formation in contemporary higher education students
Measuring Young Graduates' Job Quality Through a Composite Indicator
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |