Developing and Utilizing Employability Capitals: Graduates Strategies Across Labour Markets

Graduate employability is a significant concern for most higher education institutions worldwide. During the last two decades, universities have attempted to implement their employability agendas to support their students to enhance employment outcomes. However, within today’s globalized labour markets, employability has gone far beyond the notion of obtaining stable and permanent employment. This book explores graduates’ experiences in developing and utilizing employability capitals for career development and success in different labour markets.

In the chapters, the graduate contributors narrate and discuss how they negotiated their employability on the transitions across jobs, occupational sectors and labour markets. The chapters address key issues, including how employability is understood by graduates of different disciplines, at different career stages and in different contexts; how they develop and utilise such capitals along with strategies to negotiate their employability; and what can be done to move the higher education employability agenda forward.

The book presents international insights and perspectives into transitions from education to work and career development across the labour markets, as well as calls for improving the graduate employability agenda. It is an invaluable resource for researchers and academics, university leaders, policymakers and students who are concerned about graduate employability.

Tran Le Huu Nghia is a Research Fellow in work-integrated learning and graduate employability at the College of Business and Economics, Australian National University, Australia

Thanh Pham is a Lecturer in graduate employability and higher education at the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Australia

Michael Tomlinson is an Associate Professor and a leading researcher in graduate employability at the University of Southampton, UK

Karen Medica is a Lecturer in the Business School at Monash University, Australia

Christopher D. Thompson is Associate Dean (Education) at the Faculty of Science, Monash University, Australia