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This paper aims to outline work to support the employability agenda in the Library at the University of Sheffield, set in the context of debates about the nature of employability, employability skills and information literacy in the workplace.

The paper starts with a brief review of literature on employability and student skills in the UK higher education sector, the place of information literacy as an employability attribute and information literacy in the workplace. It goes on to outline work done in the Library at the University of Sheffield to support the employability agenda. This includes the development of a commercial awareness workshop in collaboration with other services and the incorporation of student and alumni voices in an employability guide.

The literature reviewed highlights the differences between information literacy in the workplace and academia. This could present challenges and opportunities in promoting information literacy as an employability attribute. The case study highlights the benefits of working in collaboration with students and services beyond the library in the employability arena.

The approaches taken in Sheffield may be of interest to other institutions looking to develop support for the employability agenda.

This paper analyses whether low‐skilled workers' training participation and task flexibility contribute to their firm‐internal and firm‐external mobility, and find that both training participation and task flexibility contribute only to firm‐internal employability. However, the workers' participation in training plays a much more explicit role in their firm‐internal career than their task flexibility does, as the former appears to be an important means to increase their opportunities in the firm‐internal labour market. Neither the low‐skilled workers' participation in training nor their task flexibility contributes to their external employability. Task‐flexible, low‐skilled workers are less likely to expect to be externally employable than non‐task flexible workers are. The focus of the low‐skilled workers on their firm‐internal employability can be explained by the fact that such workers usually have more opportunities to improve their position in the firm‐internal labour market than in the external labour market.

This research examines the mediating effect of self-efficacy among interrelationships of emotional intelligence, achievement motivation and students’ employability in the Chinese higher education institutions. This study was primarily conducted by applying the social cognitive theory to explain the beliefs and abilities of being employed for university students and influenced by their achievement motivation.

A survey approach was employed to collect the samples of 585 final-year college students using the convenience sampling method from 5 different Chinese higher education institutions. The structural equation modeling (SEM) approach was used as the data analysis method.

The result significantly supported the positive effect of emotional intelligence (ß = 0.298, p < 0.001) and achievement motivation (ß = 0.307, p < 0.001) on students’ employability. Furthermore, the results also showed that self-efficacy significantly had a mediating effect between achievement motivation and employability (ß = 0.119, CI95%: 0.062, 0.195) among college students. However, the study confirmed that self-efficacy was not associated with the relationship between emotional intelligence and employability (ß = 0.029, CI95%: −0.003, 0.075).

This research clarifies and highlights that psychological variables have highly correlated with the employability outcomes of university students. The findings also hold significant value and practical implications for the governments, colleges, and students that enhancing employability should be through targeted interventions. This study sets the stage for future research exploring potential mediators of motivation and other essential factors that may influence among the existing relationship.

This viewpoint aims to provide an overview of graduate employability in Lebanon from the perspective of the Dean of Olayan School of Business at the American University of Beirut, who is a reputable academic leader heading a world-ranked business school. The discussion also looks at the external factors that affect graduate employability in Lebanon with direct references to the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic crisis.

Through conversation with the Dean of a prominent business school in Lebanon, this viewpoint discusses several topics pertaining to the concept of graduate employability.

To boost graduate employability the focus should be on developing the curriculum, engaging with the alumni network, exploiting the board of governors and building on the school’s reputation and legacy.

Crises do offer new opportunities. Covid-19 pandemic has prepared employers to accept the idea of remote working, which has helped in boosting graduate employability in Lebanon.

Employability is an established research theme in Western literature; however, in developing economies, the concept remains unclear and underresearched. This study addresses this lacuna by exploring how Sri Lankan higher education (HE) administrators conceptualise employability and which capitals they perceive as needing development to achieve employability.

The research utilised semi-structured interviews with an expert panel responsible for leading the development of the employment agenda within Sri Lankan HE. The purposive sample included four Sri Lankan vice chancellors (VCs), representing leadership at 27% of the country’s publicly funded universities and the HE funding commission. The qualitative data collected were thematically analysed to identify how employability was conceptualised and the perceived employability skills and capitals required.

The findings demonstrated that employability was conceptualised as requiring transferable skills and job-specific occupational skills. This view of employability represents a narrow definition with an emphasis on skill development rather than longer-term capability building. The results show the applicability of Bourdieu’s (1986) capitals in the Sri Lankan HE context, with cultural and social capital and proficiency in the English language critical to meeting employability objectives.

This research addresses the shortage of research about the concept and requirements of employability in developing countries. Most employability studies have drawn on samples from students, lecturers and employers, whilst this study considers the phenomenon from the perspectives of strategic administrators in HE who guide the employability agenda in practice. These insights are important in informing policymakers to calibrate a more balanced approach by incorporating employability into the Sri Lankan HE curriculum and sector strategy.

The paper aims to close a literature gap by proposing a comprehensive conceptual soft skills competency framework for enhancing graduate intern employability through the cultivation of employability capital.

The study employed a theoretical inquiry and delved into the existing literature on employability, soft skills competencies and employability capital to establish a comprehensive foundation to formulate the conceptual framework. A content analysis of existing empirical studies was conducted to derive a generic list of employers’ required soft skills. A Delphi technique was employed to harness expert consensus and insights into the derived framework.

Employability capital can be cultivated in the setting of work-integrated learning programmes and synergised through emotional and social intelligence interventions to enhance soft skills competency and graduate employability.

The soft skills identified may overlook other important skills required by employers. Increasing participation in the Delphi study could yield additional valuable insights. Validation of the framework is needed in practical settings to understand its effectiveness and applicability to real-world organisational needs.

This study significantly enhances understanding of the role of employability capital in soft skills competency development and graduate employability through work-integrated learning programs and self-development. In addition, the framework has the potential to positively impact the employer-employee relationship.

The key theoretical contribution is a soft skill development framework that offers employers and graduates a means to identify and address deficiencies through WIL and self-development.

Sustainable employability has emerged as a multifaceted construct that measures individuals' abilities to function in the labour market throughout their working lives. Therefore, it is no longer just about analysing how to achieve a successful transition from school/university to employment, but also about identifying the conditions that will allow people to continue to be capable and motivated in the long term. The aim of this work was to identify and rank the personal factors of an individual that contribute to his or her perceived sustainable employability.

The authors used a quantitative methodology to estimate the structural model proposed. A stratified random procedure was used to administer an online questionnaire to 202 university master’s degree students. Before testing the structural model, the validation of each scale was performed, both at the exploratory and confirmatory levels.

The results indicate that four groups were key to improve individual sustainable employability: (1) Health Status; (2) Career Competencies; (3) Core Self-Evaluations and (4) Overcoming Competencies.

The results are of interest to any individual, employed or not, insofar as they can reflect on the relevance of each category and how to improve them at the individual level.

This study contributes to research on sustainable employability focus on the analysis of young people by providing empirical evidence on its relationship with other key variables, in an area where the literature remains mainly conceptual and centred in workers.

This study aims to examine the relationship between organizational social capital, university image, perceived employability and career satisfaction of information technology (IT) professionals. It also aims to investigate the moderating effects of diverse age groups of IT professionals on the antecedents and consequences of career satisfaction.

Variance-based partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique was used to analyze a dataset of 412 responses from IT professionals. The predictive relevance of career satisfaction was estimated through PLS predict, and the relative importance of determinants was analyzed through importance-performance map analysis (IPMA). PLS Multi-group analysis (PLS-MGA) and measurement invariance of composites (MICOM) were used to estimate the moderating effects of age groups.

The findings of this study indicate that university image is perceived as the crucial factor for career satisfaction by IT professionals followed by perceived employability and organizational social capital. Gender was found to be a positive predictor of career satisfaction. PLS-MGA results indicate that organizational social capital is a prominent predictor of career satisfaction for middle-aged professionals as compared to young professionals as the latter consider university image to be more important.

This is the first study to examine the relationship between organizational social capital, university image, perceived employability, and career satisfaction of IT professionals in a developing country context.

Given the dynamic and fast-evolving labour market, developing students’ employability competences has become of utmost importance for higher education institutions. The ability to reflect is essential to develop these competences, as it helps students to identify their learning needs and make plans for further development. However, reflective abilities are not easy to acquire and students need guidance to help them reflect. Therefore, mentoring is often used as an instructional approach to stimulate students to reflect. Empirical evidence on the relation between mentoring and employability competences is scarce, and the mediating role of reflection especially has rarely been researched. Consequently, the present study aims to investigate this mediating relationship, employing a pre-test post-test design.

Questionnaire data were collected from students before and after participation in four similar 1-year mentoring programmes in higher education within the Netherlands and Belgium (n = 160).

The path analysis demonstrated that, first, trust and availability, autonomy support and empathy were significantly related to students’ employability competences. Secondly, autonomy support and similarity were significantly related to students’ critical reflection. Thirdly, critical reflection was significantly related to students’ employability competences. Last, reflection partially mediated the relationship between mentoring (autonomy support and similarity) and employability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to demonstrate that mentoring programmes in higher education enable students to reflect and, in turn, develop their employability competences. Furthermore, it provides mentoring programme directors and mentors with concrete guidelines for developing students’ reflection and employability competences.

A range of models of employability implicitly or directly identify potential drivers of motivated behaviour related to engaging in employment-related outcomes whilst acknowledging that employability is also about developing life skills. Motivational theorists suggest that tasks engaged for external purposes, e.g. working towards an employment-related goal, are experienced differently than (those same) tasks engaged in for less external reasons, e.g. the desire for knowledge. Whilst there are excellent examples of the use of motivational theory in some models of employability, sometimes the evidence is either outdated, incorrectly interpreted or fails to use the most appropriate motivational theory. The aim of this paper is to bring to attention several prominent motivational theories and some key evidence that seems most pertinent across models of employability.

As this was a non-empirical design, the approach did not fit any research design methodology or structured, systematic or meta-analysis review. The paper outlines a series of arguments by reviewing in detail several theories of motivation and mapping them against current models of employability.

From a theoretical point of perspective, it is suggested that Expectancy Value Theory needs to be considered when creating models of employability. It is also suggested that motivation for employment-related tasks is probably extrinsic, though evidence suggests that forms of extrinsic motivation can also be motivationally adaptive. Several models posit self-efficacy as a driver of motivated behaviour, but the evidence suggests a clear and consistent interactive relationship between subjective task value and self-efficacy, suggesting that self-efficacy is only a useful predictor when value is high.

Whilst the aim of models of employability is to improve our understanding of the predictors of employability behaviours, the practical consequence is the development of appropriate curriculum. Understanding which features of employability create adaptive and maladaptive motivation should help educators create curriculum that produces optimal engagement and performance.

Models of employability are mostly created using bodies of extant evidence. In this paper, we have tried to identify where some of the interpretation of the evidence has been more or less appropriate. We hope that ideas and evidence in this paper will allow theorists, where appropriate, to re-develop their models.