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 research is to attempt to reveal the difference between what fresh graduates expect and their actual experiences pertaining to the working environment. Design/methodology/approach: Using a set of self-administered questionnaires, data were collected from 128 graduates. They were asked to indicate their preferences on…

Purpose: The industrial training component in a university's curricula adds tremendous value to a degree programme by enhancing the employable skills of graduates. The purpose of this paper is to assess the perception of organisations that have trained construction students from the Department of Building Technology of the Kwame Nkrumah University…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the issue of dual vocational education and training (VET) attritions as indicating difficulties in the transition from school to work. Design/methodology/approach: The methodology consists of a content analysis of semi-structured interviews with 46 young people who interrupted their dual VET during…

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 examine the situated understandings that higher education students can offer on their employability, and to make sense of "employability" in industry and career context-specific ways. The paper further seeks to explore potential critical reflections on emerging professional practice and future…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of generational difference and reflect on how this might impact on organisational approaches to graduate development. Design/methodology/approach: The paper explores the characteristics of Generation Y graduates and the implications of their entry into the workplace for organisations'…

Purpose: The paper aims to explore the experience of graduates in the workplace. The aim is to study how these experiences differ from the expectations of the graduates and the aspirations of their academics. Design/methodology/approach: The research involved two phases: first, a survey was conducted of marketing academics. This survey examined…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate experiences of students when working during the term. The particular aim of the study is to determine central aspects relevant for students when assessing their term-time job. Design/methodology/approach: The data are based on a qualitative study conducted at Chemnitz University of Technology,…

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 a prospective entrepreneurship training model based on experiential learning which will enable the "production" of small business owners or entrepreneurs which is not being achieved by the current methods. Design/methodology/approach: This is a conceptual paper. It analyses the current…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore graduate training through SME-based project work. The views and behaviours of graduates are examined along with the perceptions of the SMEs and academic partner institutions charged with training graduates. Design/methodology/approach: The data are largely qualitative and derived from the experiences of…

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 analyse the effectiveness of entrepreneurship training programmes targeting post-graduate students. Design/methodology/approach: The approach takes the form of a case study of an entrepreneurship training programme, to assess its effectiveness. For this purpose the paper concentrates on the number of firms…

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to identify key factors influencing employee learning from the perspective of owners/managers. Design/methodology/research: Data were gathered from owners/managers in a total of 27 small manufacturing and services firms through interviews and analysed using content analytic procedures. Findings: The…