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This study illuminates the assumption that internships facilitate labor market entry and answers the question of why internships have a positive effect on students' self-perceived employability. It is assumed that internships enable more positive employability perceptions by reducing career-entry worries – the worries of not finding a suitable job or not being able to obtain a satisfactory career.

A two-wave study among graduate students currently in an internship investigated these relationships. Data on career-entry worries, perceived employability and an evaluation of the internship were collected from 80 students (mean age: 24.6 years, 68% female) from various fields of study aiming at both bachelor's and master's degrees.

The results showed that positively evaluated internships contributed to graduates' self-perceived employability by means of reduced career-entry worries over an eight-week period.

By considering graduates' career-entry worries – the perceived uncertainty about finding an “appropriate” career in the future – the authors introduce a new concept to the career literature and show that these worries are significant in terms of self-assessed employability.

This paper aims to identify internship factors and their roles in obtaining employment, establishing relationships among them using interpretive structural modeling (ISM).

Based on the literature review of more than 100 studies (1982–2020), 11 internship factors were identified. This was followed by the application of ISM technique to get insights into how these factors affect employability.

ISM technique and empirical research aided in classifying the factors on their driving and dependence power. Further analysis identified contextual relationships between all factors and how these affect each other.

This study will be helpful for educators, students and managers to understand how internship affects employability through understanding of the factors and their relations.

This study is the first study presenting a holistic view of internship factors and how their relationships affect employability in the emerging market perspective of Jordan.

The purpose of this study was to investigate attractiveness of internship advertisements to the prospective applicants through the lens of employer branding. By giving attention to internship attractiveness, universities and companies expand current collaborations around internship provision to enhance student internship experiences, satisfaction and employment prospects and to foster long-term sustainability of internship programs.

The study used a mixed-methods design employing a concurrent triangulation strategy. The authors conducted a content analysis of 94 internship listings published in the largest Russian job portal, HeadHunter, and collected surveys from 274 prospective interns.

The study shows a mismatch between employer branding strategies and prospective interns' perceptions of employer attractiveness. Companies emphasize economic value and visual identity as well as functional attributes, while prospective interns prioritize development value and symbolic attributes. The findings suggest internship advertisements do not appeal to potential applicants.

The results are limited to business students from specific universities in Russia, so further research is needed to include students with different majors and from other countries. The study is also limited to advertisements available via a large online job portal. A comparative analysis of effectiveness of various communication channels for internship promotion could yield useful results.

Career center advisors, academic program directors and internship coordinators should work with company leaders, human resources and marketing decision-makers, and recruitment specialists to better understand interns' drivers of attraction and audit the internship advertisements. Employers could use the study results to strengthen recruiting messages and, hence, attractiveness of the employer brand to potential interns.

The study contributes by applying the employer branding theory to an understudied population of interns, hence providing new insights into internships as collaboration between universities and companies. By focusing on internship positions, which differ from full-time permanent positions across many aspects, including the positions' duration, pay, supervision and purpose, the study assists in understanding the distinct drivers of attraction of interns, which are missing from published research on the topic.

The positive correlation between students’ internship and employability is well documented. However, there is no consensus on its relationship with academic performance. Previous studies investigated the Bachelor level: in the UK, the so-called sandwich placement is positively correlated; in the US, the results are mixed. This study aims to expand the scientific literature and focuses on Politecnico di Torino, Italy: the cases of the Industrial and Management Engineering Bachelor (BA) and Master of Science (MS) degree programs are examined.

The academic performance of 2,279 BA students and 2,560 MS students graduated between 2016 and 2021 is examined. Ordinary least square models are employed to test the relationship between grades and internship, controlling for ex ante academic scores, gender, age and geographical origin.

The results show a small robust negative correlation between internship and grades, especially at the bachelor level, where potentially a self-selection occurs. At the master level, the negative relationship is significant but very small and might be partially determined by the marks of the exams substituting the internship.

This study contributes to the empirical research on the relationship between students’ grade and internship and suggests the presence of complementarities in several ways: the Italian context, characterized by an optional internship is examined, both at the BA and MS level. Universities that intend to organize internship as overlapping with lectures and exams should be cautious, especially when considering the BA level students, whose maturity and skills are less developed than MS ones.

Firstly, this study diagnosed professional competence amongst Chinese vocational students within a broad range of the manufacturing sectors; then, the authors examined how different types of P-E fit (job, organisation and vocation) and internship quality jointly shape the newly acquired professional competences of interns.

This study utilised the COMET methodology to conduct a large-scale assessment of professional competence amongst 961 graduates from vocational colleges who had successfully completed internships. Participants actively engaged in the data collection process by responding to questionnaires that sought contextual information concurrently.

The majority of students have attained fundamental functional competencies, indicating their fulfillment of basic requirements. However, there is a tendency to overlook the cultivation of shaping competence. Three types of P-E fit and task characteristics are positively correlated with professional competence. The indirect relationship between P-E fit and professional competence mediated by task characteristics was verified through P-V fit and P-J fit except for P-O fit. Overall, the model explains 39.2% of the variance in professional competence.

“How to promote professional competence” has been highlighted as an important topic in vocational education. This paper contributes to identify the characteristics of a quality internship program for vocational colleges and firms. These insights are important in considering a student-centred approach, design internships programmes that better fit their own abilities, needs and vocations, avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach to implement internships and thus, enhance students' professional development.

This study aims to shed light on how internships' features drive employability outcomes and answers the question of how internships that maximize the employability of interns can be designed. The study assumes that the duration of an internship, degree of formalization and the use of internship-specific motivational practices by companies are likely to influence interns' perceptions of employability.

A study among interns investigated the relationship between different internship features and interns' employability. Data on the duration of the internship, motivational practices specific to internships and the formalization of the internship process were collected from a large sample of 13,565 interns in 27 European countries from 15 to 35 years old.

The findings suggest that internship duration has a curvilinear effect on employability with increasing effects on employability at the beginning of the internship, followed by a decrease over time. In addition, the use of practices specifically designed to motivate interns also favors the interns' employability. Finally, formalization of the internship placement moderates the effect of motivational practices on employability.

By identifying key features of the internship experience – duration, formalization and motivational practices – the authors contribute to the theory related to the development of career resources and employability in young adults and show that these features significantly shape young adults' employability perceptions.

Generation Z comprises the newest cohort to enter the workforce, and they not content to be the Millennials’ younger sibling. Born between 1997 and 2012, Gen Z’s identity is shaped by being the first generation to come into a post-9/11 world, by the effects of the Great Recession on their parents’ and families’ economic well-being, by the proliferation of technology and social media, by the specter of school shootings and violence, and by the current period of reckoning with past and present racial injustice. The defining moment for this generation, however, is entering adulthood during or in the wake of a global pandemic that significantly changed both education and industry. The confluence of this new generation of career entrants, the dramatically shifting job forms and careers (e.g., contingent work and the gig economy), and the post-COVID landscape of work provides a rich and compelling research agenda for management and human resource management as Gen Z enters workplace and progresses through their careers. Little academic research has examined this generation and its complexity, but the business community is very interested in preparing for the influx of Gen Z into their organizations and as consumers. Gen Z is diverse, global, and mobile. They are defined by their almost symbiotic relationship with technology, but surprisingly desire in-person connection. This generation was hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, in their education, finances, relationships, and well-being. They are a generation in flux. Future research directions are explored and presented.

This narrative inquiry examined the experiences of new urban principals as they transitioned into their role during their first year. The research questions focused on the challenges new principals faced and the types and effectiveness of support that were offered. Findings confirmed that principals addressed student behavior and campus appearance before shifting their attention to classroom instruction. Coaching, mentoring, and change of principal workshops were helpful district support.

To analyze and personally relate to an individual having faced a quarter-life crisis; to define how environmental factors influence the person’s career priorities; to analyze the causes of career-family conflicts; to comprehend another gender’s position and concerns; and to originate ideas for prospective career development.

The case study presents a career management dilemma of a PhD candidate, senior lecturer at the Almaty Management University, Kazakhstan and a married mother of two small children. Having faced a kind of quarter-life crisis and the pressures of a traditional society with gendered career trajectories, the protagonist (33) is challenging her initial plan of an academic career that sees gradual promotion and progress and has to make a difficult decision about her professional and personal identity amidst the realities of a newly emerging and transitional economy.

Master’s level

Teaching notes, company’s organizational charts, protagonist’s curriculum vitae, PowerPoint slides with the protagonist and her classmates’ pictures.

CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

This study aims to understand how employability capitals’ dynamics foster self-perceived employability (SPE) among students and graduates, which is still being empirically explored. Building upon the Employability Capital Growth Model and the Social Cognitive Career Theory’s career self-management model, we aimed to understand how different capitals associate by testing a serial mediation model connecting career identity (reflecting career identity capital) and SPE through the serial mediation of cultural capital and job interview self-efficacy (ISE) (an element of psychological capital).

We adopted a two-wave design involving 227 Italian University students and graduates. We recruited participants through multi-channel communication. The hypothesised relationships were analysed employing the structural equation modelling approach with the SPSS AMOS statistical package.

The results indicated that career identity, cultural capital, ISE and SPE are meaningfully related. In particular, in line with our expectations, we observed that career identity predicts cultural capital, which is positively associated with ISE which, ultimately, impacts SPE.

Our work adds to existing research by advancing the understanding of employability capitals, explaining how they interact and influence SPE, which is crucial for a sustainable transition into the workforce. At a practical level, our findings call upon, and guide, efforts from various stakeholders in the graduate career ecosystem (i.e. universities and their partners) to offer students and graduates meaningful experiences to form and use their employability capitals.