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The purpose of this paper is to describe the college-to-work transition as experienced by first-generation college (FGC) graduates. First-generation graduates are often adjusting to workplaces that are significantly different from parents’ work environments.

This phenomenological study explored the early-career learning experiences of six FGC graduates from the USA. All participants were working full-time and had graduated two to six years earlier.

Three themes were identified: starting the job, being in the job, and releasing the past. Participants highlighted unanticipated aspects of their college-to-work transition, including dealing with workplace politics and family dynamics. They also described ambivalence between their current work and the desire to pursue a more compelling career or vocational passion.

All participants were white and from similar (rural) settings in one region of the USA. The qualitative nature of the study restricts generalization.

This study suggests, given the distinction between first-generation students’ post-college work environments and that of their parents, that educators’ efforts to assist FGC students might appropriately extend to topics beyond graduation. FGC graduates should be alerted to the impact of shifts in social and cultural norms, and informed about changing family dynamics that may continue after leaving school.

Previous research has highlighted the challenges facing FGC students. This is one of few studies that explores the experiences of FGC graduates in the workplace following graduation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether work values vary across different life and career stages in a sample of Millennials.

The sample for this study was comprised of 906 Canadian Millennials (born between 1980 and 1994).

Pre-career and working Millennials varied in terms of the importance they placed on five work values – interesting work, achievement, good co-workers, doing work that helped people and salary – although these differences were small in magnitude. This suggests that Millennials’ work values are relatively stable as they grow older and gain work experience.

A large body of research citing generational differences relies upon cross-sectional studies which compares different generations of individuals at different life stages, thus making it impossible to disentangle whether the differences are a result of generational or life-cycle effects. The findings that the importance of work values shift over the life course suggest that maturation effects may explain only a small portion of these differences in the emerging adulthood phase. This finding is particularly important for researchers who rely on samples of post-secondary students as this is a period of change from both an individual and career developmental perspective.

This research suggests that pre-career Millennials may be attracted to organizations which emphasize a collegial work environment and socially responsible culture. Once they are in the workforce, Millennials can be attracted and retained through attractive working conditions and remuneration. All Millennials are most likely to be attracted to workplaces that provide interesting work, work-life balance, job security and the information workers need to do their jobs effectively.

Developmental psychology and career development literature suggest that transitioning from school-to-work is a major life event. Past research has shown that the importance of work values change across this transition and that this change differs among social generations (i.e. Baby Boomers and Generation Xers), but research to date has not examined this transition in the current, millennial generation (born after 1980). We answer the call for researchers to understand Millennials as they progress in their careers, demonstrate that the shift in work values is different for Millennials, and provide actionable recommendations for managers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the inequality in career constructions among freshmen in an elite university in Shanghai, China. The authors first investigated whether rural students and those from municipalities (zhi xia shi) and provincial capitals differ in their career awareness when arriving at college. After finding the difference, the authors explored how this initial difference in career awareness evolves and influences the career construction process in the freshman year.

This study used a complementary mixed-methods approach to monitor a cohort of students’ career construction process and the evolvement of their career awareness throughout the freshman year (n=210). Data collection included two surveys: students’ self-reflections and in-depth interviews to capture a holistic story.

The findings revealed that students differed in career awareness when arriving at college. This initial difference further evolved in the first year of college: students from municipalities and provincial capitals considered college a part of their career paths and began timely to construct their careers, whereas students from rural areas lagged behind. This study suggests that college maintains inequality, reinforcing the initial gap in career construction based on students’ family background.

College students differ in career prospects and associated skills when transitioning from school to work. Only a few studies have explored the role of college in shaping the career construction process during the college years. By exploring the process of career construction among freshmen, this study contributes to the growing literature on school-to-work transition and educational inequality in China.

This study seeks to understand the college‐to‐work transition process from the perspectives of a group of new management consultants.

This study focuses on the experience of a group of management consultants, how they construct meaning in their work, and the workplace itself. Participants in this study consisted of 25 consultants of a major management consulting firm in the USA. As the main source of information, interviews elicited the consultants’ accounts of their experiences since they were hired and their opinions about issues and events related to their professional development.

From the study, it is clear that learning from project experience and work relationships facilitated the new consultants’ organizational acculturation process and their journeys of becoming management consultants required more than development of competencies. The study shows that development of professional identities and career adaptation to organizational priorities is an equally important agenda for these young professionals. Legitimate peripheral participation in this study highlights the progressive nature of the consultants’ learning trajectories in the consulting practice. From an initially limited involvement in the practice to greatly increased responsibilities, the consultants moved toward full participation as their competencies developed along with their knowledge of the enterprise's social‐political context.

The consultants’ journeys of becoming were idiosyncratic in their specifics, but evidenced clear common patterns of complex workplace socialization.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the experiences of first-generation college graduates in the USA, as they transitioned from higher education into employment in the private sector. First-generation college graduates are from families in which neither parent had a bachelor’s degree.

This paper used phenomenology to gain an understanding of the transition experiences of first-generation college graduates employed within the corporate sector.

First-generation status influences the experiences of students beyond college and limits their awareness of and access to graduate employment. Lack of college education in the family affects the graduates’ career decision-making, familiarity with corporate culture and expectations, preparedness for the corporate sector and restricted access to people with the ability to ease their entry into the sector. These translate into transition outcomes such as starting at entry-level positions not requiring a college degree, delayed access to graduate-level positions, having to engage intentionally in additional efforts to reach graduate-level positions and potential to be discriminated against during the recruitment process, albeit unintentionally.

Is first-generation status yet another structural contextual factor that influences career decision self-efficacy? Is the influence of FG status common across sectors? Longitudinal studies need to be conducted across sectors, regions and countries.

There is a need to sensitize faculty and career service staff to career-related challenges of first-generation students and for programs and policies that increase awareness of these students regarding professional environments and expectations. There are social justice implications for recruitment strategies and overcoming discrimination.

This paper explored first-generation college graduates’ experiences, an issue hitherto not explored in depth.

This exploratory research aims to unravel how Chinese international students form their decisions regarding the school-to-work transition (sometimes also referred to as the university-to-work transition) when studying abroad.

The authors use the concepts of school-to-work transition and cultural approaches to investigate how Chinese graduate students make career decisions to navigate the school-to-work transition in the context of international mobility. The authors' empirical study is based on 30 semi-structured interviews conducted with Chinese graduate students studying in the Netherlands.

The authors discovered four patterns with two major subgroups among Chinese students studying in the universities in the Netherlands based on their initial intentions: return-return, open-return, open-stay and stay-stay. These patterns made sense when navigating the school-to-work transition: participants experienced varied international experiences, cultural perceptions and acknowledgment influences when enhancing employability and shaping their career decisions. Participants in the return-return and stay-stay groups indicated strong resilience and consistency in achieving their goals and strongly focused on long-term objectives. However, participants' open-return decision demonstrated a thoughtful alignment of personal goals and knowledge of the possible beneficial influence they may have in their home country. Open-stay participants utilized the overseas study opportunity to finalize their decisions and increase their employability in the local labor market, thereby creating a transition from university to work in the host country.

The authors highlight the way Chinese graduate students manage their international experience and provide novel insights into the role played by the cultural characteristics of their home country and host country.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that it is important to focus on the apprentices' collaborative learning processes when addressing issues of learning transfer.

The claims about the importance of addressing processes of collaborative activities and learning in relation to learning transfer are based on the study following the completion of questionnaires by 243 apprentices and interviews in which 19 baker apprentices participated.

The research results prove that it is important to pay attention to collaborative activities among learners in order to ensure learning transfer.

One limitation of the study is that it does not elaborate on reasons that some apprentices are motivated to integrate what they were taught at vocational college in a workplace setting while others are not motivated to do so.

Educators will become more aware of individual and collective initiatives to cross the boundaries between vocational school and workplace practice.

The study adds to the discussion of learning transfer through an investigation of learning transfer from a collaborative perspective. Most transfer studies have focused on the nature of knowledge or the structural barriers between college and workplace practice, while this study emphasizes the collaborative nature of learning transfer.

The causes and consequences of stress are well documented. The specific way in which stress may affect the graduate working in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) is the focus. A model of stress, specific to the experiences of the graduate, which incorporates both the causes and consequences of stress is developed and viewed as a necessary precursor to empirical investigation. Having highlighted how stress may manifest for the graduate working in SMEs, interventions are suggested which could reduce the all too apparent costs. An awareness of the effects of stress, education about the working environment, and the need for support networks, are presented as potential stress management strategies.

This paper argues that universities can facilitate women graduates' employability by supporting gender equity within their institutions. It presents a rationale and strategy for addressing the gendered nature of career confidence which negatively impacts women graduates' entry into the workplace – a phenomenon that influences women graduates' career and life trajectories, and all industries' capacity to serve women stakeholders.

The authors consider existing literature as “words to think with” (Kinsella and Shepherd, 2020), as a feminist methodology to contribute fresh ideas into the discourse arena of graduate employability and as a means to make social change possible (Phelan, 1994).

The paper presents the feminist viewpoint that a reconfiguration of gender relations in the academy, through deploying gender equity quotas, and professional development activities designed to expose and help mitigate implicit gender bias are required to support women graduates' career confidence and employability.

The paper offers a viewpoint rather than an empirical evidence because of the difficulty in directly assessing a causal relationship between gendered education experience and graduates' self-efficacy and transition from college to work, “due to its longitudinal nature … [and] because cultural beliefs are … difficult to manipulate experimentally” (Sterling et al., 2020, p. 30,306). Also, while gender equity quotas have had some success, they can be disrupted by gendered bias within the workplace. Although the authors recommend a combination intervention of gender equity quotas and professional development to address gender bias, they acknowledge that the intervention is yet to be evaluated.

Universities are tasked with supporting graduate employability, an inherent quality of which is graduate identity. The study offers a practical solution to increasing the number of women leaders within the academy by recommending the introduction of gender equity quotas, supported by professional development designed to develop leaders' gender insight and change agency, and combat all university workers' gender bias. This approach provides more equitable work structures within universities and increases the number and nature of women role models to support women's graduate identity development. Gender equity principles are presented as the key to facilitating women graduates' self-efficacy and work readiness.

Strategy designed to enhance women graduates' career confidence is critical because women's lower career confidence tends to inform their lower-level starting positions with lower-level pay, resulting in role and pay gaps that are sustained and magnified throughout the life cycle of their careers. Additionally, interventions to address gender bias in the academy are significant because providing gender equity quotas alongside facilitating women in leadership positions to be/come change agents move beyond what Cockburn (1989, p. 218) defines as supporting a short-term agenda of “equality for individual women … [to supporting a] project of transformation for organizations”.

The novel contribution of this paper is the feminist conceptualisation that gender equity practices, most notably a composite of gender equity quotas and professional development, are located within universities' remit to support graduate employability.

Employers increasingly require students to possess competences that go beyond theoretical knowledge and academic expertise, such as lifelong learning skills. To equip students with these competences, higher education institutes have introduced coaching as part of their teaching programs. The present study qualitatively evaluates a career coaching practice in higher education.

We conducted semi-structured interviews with graduates who had participated in career coaching activities at a Dutch university (N = 12). The interviews were conducted between February and May 2022. Atlas.ti version 9 was used to analyse the interviews.

Results revealed that graduates believed that career coaching helped them to adjust to the workplace. They indicated that the coaching practice helped them to acquire reflection skills, which was considered the main mechanism for adjustment to the workplace.

These results add to the transition-related literature by identifying one way that graduates successfully adjust to the workplace.

The results also provide insight into how higher education can best prepare students for their transition to the workplace.

As the education-to-work transition does not end upon graduation, this research focusses on graduate employees’ work adjustment as an important phase in the transition process.