Empowering students by enhancing their employability skills

Abstract

Recognising the importance of graduates being equipped with appropriate employability skills alongside their subject-specific skills, we have had transferable skills training embedded throughout our degree programmes for 30 years. More recently, a specific employability skills module for final-year honours students has been created. This module consists of a programme of activities supporting employability skills, which was delivered to final-year undergraduate students from 2012 to 2015. A key feature in the development and delivery of these activities was the involvement of external experts. Detailed questionnaires have captured student perceptions and thematic analysis has revealed key themes. The module has been perceived to be highly useful, resulting in significant increases in students’ confidence across key areas of employability skills. Furthermore, students may hold skewed perceptions of the relevance of generic employability skills to their chosen career path. This fact should be considered when delivering employability skills programmes

The Effect of Basic Skills Counseling as Vital Skills in Peer Counseling to Indonesian Students

“…In recent study, as such, the module has been developed primarily to address the Career Developmental Learning component of the framework. It is functioned to make it possible to help students be ready to go to the job market, how to present themselves effectively to employers and how to make informed decisions about the future of their careers [22].…”

A comparative study of the expectations of SME employers recruiting young people in Germany, Australia and the United States

“…Much recent literature in this field relates to the concept of employability in the context of higher education graduates (Clarke, 2018;Small et al, 2018) and training for employability (Scott et al, 2019).…”

“…Much recent literature in this field relates to the concept of employability in the context of higher education graduates (Clarke, 2018; Small et al, 2018) and training for employability (Scott et al, 2019). As Billett (2014, p. 14) highlighted, there is a historical and enduring emphasis on entry‐level training with a keen focus on young people's employability.…”

Mixed-mode instruction using active learning in small teams improves generic problem-solving skills of university students

“…Rather than concerns related to the purely technical knowledge and know-how of their future employees, the majority of respondents are more worried about deficiencies in or absence of such skills as writing proficiency, public speaking, critical thinking and problem solving (PayScale 2016). These concerns are echoed by a number of recent academic and government publications arguing that undergraduate education should not focus exclusively on building subject-specific knowledge of students; rather, it should also foster growth and development of generic, domain-general skills (Arvanitakis and Hornsby 2016;Hakkinen et al 2017;McNeil et al 2012;National Research Council 2012;Scott et al 2019;Sundberg et al 2011;). For example, Greiff et al (2014) argue that 'education in the 21st century needs to be comprehensive in the sense that it should equip students with domain-general problem-solving skills (PSS) in addition to domain-specific factual knowledge and problem-solving strategies' ().…”