Exploring the factor structure of the CareerEDGE employability development profile

Abstract

Purpose -There has been little empirical research conducted in relation to graduate employability and diagnostic tools available in this area are very limited. The purpose of this paper is to introduce and explore the factor structure of a new measure of employability development, the CareerEDGE Employability Development Profile (EDP). Design/methodology/approach -The EDP was completed by 807 undergraduate students, providing data for exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Findings -The analyses suggest that the EDP is multidimensional and maps clearly onto the CareerEDGE model of graduate employability. Research limitations/implications -These findings are discussed and interpreted as offering support for the use of the EDP with students as a developmental tool and as a measurement tool for use in the design, implementation and evaluation of employability interventions or other research purposes. Originality/value -The provision of a practical employability development tool that is suitable for use with students of any Higher Education institution. The findings also add to the limited literature on graduate employability.

Employability and the UseMyAbility Online Tool: Raising Sports Students’ Awareness to Inform the Development of Their Skills and Attributes

“…Fifteen 'generic skills' are listed, alongside a consideration of 'enterprise and entrepreneurship skills'. The five-factor structure of the model was confirmed in a later study (Dacre Pool, Qualter & Sewell, 2014). In the two projects described in this paper, these variously named aspects are termed 'skills' and 'attributes'.…”

Enhancing graduate employability in product design

“…Literature has conflicting views on the usefulness of DLHE data, due to the lack of detail it considers, being described as a measure of employment rather than employability (Beaumont, Gedye, & Richardson, 2016;Bridgstock, 2009;Dacre Pool, Qualter, & J. Sewell, 2014) that fails to take account of the social-economic backgrounds of students and the status or prestige of the HE institution attended (Dacre Pool, Qualter, & J. Sewell, 2014). However, the DLHE data is the only nationally recognised measure of graduate employment and its wide spread use permits comparison across similar courses that otherwise wouldn't be possible.…”

Employees' perceptions of HR investment and their efforts to remain internally employable: testing the exchange-based mechanisms of the ‘new psychological contract’

“…Employability, broadly defined, reflects an individual's relative, and often self-perceived chances of acquiring a job, retaining a job, or moving seamlessly between jobs, both in same or different functions and within the internal or external labor market (Brown, Hesketh, & Williams, 2003;Forrier & Sels, 2003). The phenomenon has received scholarly attention for well over two decades and continues to be a topic of interest, as indicated by the stream of recent studies concerned with the employability of specific populations, such as college graduates (Dacre Pool, Qualter, & Sewell, 2014), academic staff (Van der Klink, Van der Heijden, & Williams van Rooij, 2014), and aging (Behaghel, Caroli, & Roger, 2014) or displaced workers (Gowan, 2014); public policy issues, including the employability of university students in relation to national education initiatives (Lee, Foster, & Snaith, 2014), native populations in private sectors (Forstenlechner, Selim, Baruch, & Madi, 2014), and disabled jobseekers (Bualar, 2014); organizationally relevant correlates of employability, including job performance and psychological contract obligations (Dries, Forrier, De Vos, & Pepermans, 2014); and, as in the present research, the determinants of employability, including learning activities (Froehlich, Beausaert, Segers, & Gerken, 2014) and perceptions of organizational support ( Van den Broeck et al, 2014). Consequently, employability research spans a wide range of domains, including vocational behavior, economics, public policy, and I/O psychology, numerous contextual settings, and multiple levels of analysis.…”