Purpose: Recent graduates are an important source of talent among hired employees as they bring up-to-date knowledge into the organisation. Yet, organisations have difficulties retaining them and recognizing factors influencing their voluntary turnover, which may differ from those influencing voluntary turnover among tenured employees. For…

Purpose: This study introduces a non-orthodox approach to the dominant policy-based approaches to graduate employability through contextualizing international students' everyday experiences within their educational and wider structural contexts of the labour market. Design/methodology/approach: The study used narrative frames to collect data from…

Purpose: This study examines the perspectives of undergraduate science and technology students in Thailand regarding the influence of various role models on their entrepreneurial skills. Design/methodology/approach: This study employed the single case study research method. Purposive sampling was used to select the participants. The sample…

Purpose: As competition in the graduate labor market intensifies, extracurricular internships have become increasingly popular among university students. This paper explores whether and how students' evaluation of the higher learning that they have received changes during extracurricular internships. Design/methodology/approach: We interviewed 47…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore US students' experience in for-credit, unpaid internships overseas with particular reference to their personal development, how they mobilised their knowledge across contexts, their learning as acquisition and as participation, and what they contributed. Students were thought likely to encounter…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the perspectives of Malaysian employers and students on the need for English language proficiency and skills for employment. Design/methodology/approach: Interviews were conducted with employers from various organisations. Additionally, questionnaires were disseminated to undergraduates at four…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the value of student grade point average (GPA) as a predictor of pro-social, helpful behavior. This voluntary behavior has been shown to be highly valuable to managers and co-workers. GPA is not only predictive of success in core tasks on the job, it is also predictive of voluntary, helpful…

Purpose: This research moves beyond a focus on employability skills and explores student perceptions of preparedness for graduate life in a more holistic manner. Design/methodology/approach: Final-year business students were asked to outline their concerns regarding graduate life and the personal and professional challenges anticipated in their…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the "skills" or "employability" agenda which has long been anathema to the Humanities disciplines need not be the threat it appears to represent. This paper aims to examine the concept of realistic work environments and their focus, not only the provision of hard and soft…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore accountancy students' pre-employment decisions as regards pursuing a career after completing an internship. The paper aims to analyse the mediating effect of aspects of students' training experience in firms as direct/indirect factors which influence their career decisions.…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to compare the performance of area-based vs individual-level measures of socioeconomic status (SES). Design/methodology/approach: Using data from the longitudinal surveys of Australian youth (LSAY), a multidimensional measure of individual SES is created. This individual measure is used to benchmark the relative…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the gender impact of tertiary education on the probability of entering and remaining in self-employment. Design/methodology/approach: A data set on labour market flows produced by the Italian National Statistical Office is exploited by interviewing about 62,000 graduate and non-graduate…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present empirical evidence outlining the ways in which small businesses orientate themselves towards the training market. The primary aim is to illuminate the factors influencing small firms' (non-) participation in formal, externally-provided training. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected via…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on pedagogical research into the student experience of an approach to enterprise education integrated into the curriculum in a large metropolitan university. The paper aims to explore the implications which the research findings have for pedagogy for enhancing student employability and to discuss the…