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This study responds to identified challenges of poor work-readiness of many graduates and the inadequate relation between education and work. Through students' perspectives, the study examines the extent to which selected South African universities are supporting their students in developing employability skills and the influence of such employability support on students' enhanced employability.

Through purposive sampling, information was obtained from a sample of 402 final year students at two universities in South Africa. After an exploratory factor analysis, 34 of the 35 items on the questionnaire successfully loaded for further analysis under seven components.

South African universities that were analysed are adequately engaging their students with two of the six employability development opportunities (EDOs), while students' engagement with the other four is only to a fair extent. EDOs are found to jointly influence students' employability. The curriculum has the highest influence, followed by personal development planning, career development learning and work experience. Real-world activities and extracurricular activities were not found to influence students' self-perceived employability.

Beyond identifying skills that graduates are expected to possess, which dominate the discussion and debate on graduate employability, this study elucidates the role of universities in providing support structures – EDOs – that enable students to establish an appropriate connection between theory and practice. It provides insight into the employability potential of South African universities and increases the universities' awareness of what they can do to ensure the production of work-ready graduates.

This study explores how career training with mentoring (CTM) programs work in Nigerian higher education (HE) institutions to foster students' career development and employability of graduates. It also explores how Nigerian HE curriculum can be adequately used to facilitate CTM as well as possible constraints to effective implementation of CTM programs in Nigerian HE institutions.

The study draws on interviews with well-qualified and experienced experts from six Nigerian public universities (each from the 6 geo-political zones of Nigeria), and 20 industries also within the same 6 geo-political zones of Nigeria that were selected for this study using a purposeful sampling technique. The study interviewed 33 experts comprising 21 senior academics at Nigerian universities and 12 industry executives to reveal substantial information about CTM programs in Nigerian HE institutions.

Drawing on the three key themes that emerged during the thematic analysis and linked to social cognitive career theory, it is clear that participants are convinced that CTM can enhance clarity about students' career ambitions, career interests, personal development plans and employability. Findings show that there are some career-related programs or activities that Nigerian HE students are presented with, but the programs have not been effective as to offer graduates quality career guidance and employability skills that employers demand. Acknowledging these, participants recommend establishing CTM centres in all Nigerian HE institutions to provide students with the opportunity to receive quality career advice, coaching and mentoring services while schooling.

The findings of this study shed light on varying resources required to cope with the demands of labour market in terms of supply of competent workforce that can contribute to Nigeria's economic growth and development. The findings are highly relevant for Nigeria and other developing countries' policy and research initiatives that aim to promote social inclusion and equity and improve better working conditions for all. The findings also have implications for career development and employability of HE graduates in developing world context.

Understanding the role that CTM programs can play in facilitating career development and graduate employability can arguably be of importance within the developing world context. This study, therefore, provides significant suggestions on how to build sustained HEIs and labour market partnership to foster career development and employability of HE graduates through establishing CTM centres in every Nigerian HE institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a practical model for the evaluation and adaptation of educational programmes in order to incorporate employability development focussed on enabling graduates to self-manage their career.

The model integrates several perspectives on and conceptualisations of the nature of employability and its development. The integration of various elements is justified on the basis of existing research and the experience of local educational practitioners.

The model integrates insights from the Graduate Employability Development model (Harvey et al., 2002), the CareerEDGE model (Dacre Pool and Sewell, 2007), the Career Management Employability model (Bridgstock, 2009) and adopts three career competencies as outcome indicators (Akkermans et al., 2013). The resulting model describes in simple terms what educational practitioners may adapt in the process of employability development to enhance the ability of prospective graduates to manage their own careers.

The model remains theoretical and the relations it implies require further validation. Involving graduates and students in evaluating the model may contribute to validating its scope and applicability.

The model provides a practical tool to retrospectively and prospectively evaluate the institutional provision of employability development education. It may serve as a basis for adaptation to other programmes.

By adopting a processual perspective on employability, the model shifts away from the possession of a predefined set of characteristics, and towards enabling students to actively influence their own employability.

This study aims to consider the place of employability in universities, with a focus on research‐intensive institutions, and to outline an initiative that was introduced to promote employability skills development at the University of Nottingham.

Following a discussion of literature on the promotion of employability in higher education, the development of the “Inside Employment” initiative is outlined. The project was developed using an action research methodology.

The major findings from each cycle are outlined here, demonstrating the different factors that informed the programme's establishment.

The paper makes a number of recommendations for developing opportunities for employability skills development in universities in general, and research‐intensive universities in particular.

The paper will be of value to those involved in developing employability initiatives in higher education, particularly at research‐intensive institutions.

Empirical studies in relation to employability development opportunities (EDOs) and university students’ enhanced employability are few, especially in Nigeria. The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent of university students’ engagement with EDOs and to empirically establish the extent of the relationship between these EDOs and students’ enhanced employability.

Data were collected from 600 final-year university students in Nigeria with the use of an adapted questionnaire. The 29 items on the questionnaire were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis in which 28 loaded under six factors which were used for further analysis.

Results indicate that at Nigerian universities students are engaging with all the EDOs to a moderately sufficient extent. Findings also show that there is a significant positive relationship between EDOs and students’ enhanced employability. Besides, considering the relative contribution of each of the EDOs to students’ enhanced employability, real-world activities make the highest contribution. Extracurricular activities were found to have no significant relationship with students’ enhanced employability.

Not all the EDOs are measured in the study.

Apart from empirically confirming the significant positive relationship between EDOs and university students’ enhanced employability, the study has established the relative contribution of each of these EDOs, which is a major contribution to the limited existing body of knowledge on university students’ employability.

The purpose of this paper is to report how one University has sought to test the effectiveness of strategies to enhance employability skills, and the key themes which emerged from this investigation.

A survey tool has been used to record staff perceptions of where employability skills are strongly developed and assessed in a sample of courses. The results have been triangulated against explicit statements/mapping in course documentation, and top level University strategies and policies. Key performance indicators have been reviewed, and focus groups have been conducted to appraise student perceptions. An external scan of selected comparator benchmark institutions has also been undertaken.

Key emerging themes include issues surrounding the role of higher education; deficiencies in the classification of graduate destinations; the challenge of predicting the needs of employers of the future; and gaps between strategies, perceptions and realities.

A number of the outcomes of the audit are University specific. However, some of the key themes and issues that have emerged are relevant to the sector as a whole. This paper highlights these broader issues, whilst acknowledging that individual Universities will find their own unique responses to these challenges.

This paper shares an approach to the critical evaluation of the effectiveness of strategies to enhance employability skills development, which may be of value to educational establishments wishing to review their own provision. The paper also draws attention to key issues relating to the enhancement of graduate employability.

This paper aims to measure the extent to which students possess the necessary competences of an employable graduate, the authors explored the development and validation of a questionnaire that measures employability competences of students in higher education through combining insights from higher education and workplace learning literature.

The paper aims to develop and validate the questionnaire a systematic literature review and factor analyses were conducted. The authors applied the questionnaire to two different groups of students. First, to undergraduate students in an applied sciences program in Belgium (N = 935). The dataset was randomly divided into two subsets to conduct an exploratory and a confirmatory factor analysis. Next, another confirmatory factor analysis was done to cross-validate the factor structure found. For this, the questionnaire was offered to a group of undergraduate and graduate students at a university in The Netherlands (N = 995).

The results support a model of employability based on combined insights from higher education and workplace learning literature. The model consists of the following seven factors: social competences, e-literacy, efficacy beliefs, flexibility, healthy work–life balance, lifelong learning and oral and written communication.

The questionnaire can be utilized to screen students' employability profiles and examine the relationship between teaching practices and students’ employability competences.

Employee health is a major challenge for enterprises. Fostering a healthy work environment and promoting employee engagement are key to addressing this challenge. Health-promoting leadership and employee health are the driving forces of corporate development; at the same time, employability is the core element of employee relations. Based on self-determination theory, this study aims to explore the effects of health-promoting leadership and employee health on employee engagement in light of employee employability.

The data of this study encompass 723 valid questionnaires from employees of MSME in China. This study focuses on health-promoting leadership and employee health, engagement relationship and the above relationship moderating by employability.

Health-promoting leadership plays a key role in the workplace, results show that health-promoting leadership has a positive impact on employee health and employee engagement, while employee health did not have a positive effect on employee engagement. Employability negatively moderated the relationship between employee health and employee engagement.

This study is based on cross-sectional survey data collected at the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic rapidly and continuously changed the organizational responses to employee health. Future studies could utilize longitudinal methods or focus on measurement instruments of the culture of health, to create additional insights about health promoting.

This study adds important knowledge regarding health-promoting leadership and employee health in Chinese MSMEs, an area for which limited research exists. The findings provide insights and knowledge about health-promoting leadership how to affect employee health and to improve engagement outcomes. The findings also identify the moderating role of employability.

The purpose of this paper is to report on pedagogical research into the student experience of an approach to enterprise education integrated into the curriculum in a large metropolitan university. The paper aims to explore the implications which the research findings have for pedagogy for enhancing student employability and to discuss the approach to integrating the employability experience within these students' programme of study.

An explanatory case study approach was adopted which aimed to explore students' perspectives on studying in a simulated work environment. Using the case study approach, phenomena of the student experience and behaviour identified through a survey questionnaire were used as a benchmark to understanding how and to what extent students learn employability skills and attributes within the learning environment. The quantitative questionnaire was followed by in‐depth focus group interviews which explored the ways in which students learned in interaction with each other and with clients and the effectiveness of the simulated work environment approach.

The findings of research pointed to the value of real world experience to learner employability. Students were most motivated in the subject matter where they could engage in activity or situations which they were likely to encounter in the real world of business. This further influenced their behaviour – students demonstrated reflective thinking and enhanced confidence. The learning environment's design in terms of the interdependent way in which students were expected to work was considered to have equally high implications for learner engagement in employability.

This paper contributes to the wider research on learner engagement in employability which is a challenging issue in higher education pedagogy. The paper has some implications for appropriate learning design which would be of interest to academics and practitioners in developing curricula for employability. An emphasis is placed on the need for further research in the areas of teaching transferability to students, effective employer engagement and the value of interdependent learning.

Graduates' attitudes towards learning, although subject to change, is a crucial indicator of their understanding and involvement in lifelong learning activities. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether lifelong learning enhances human capital worth to predict perceived employability. An enquiry into the attitudinal differences on lifelong learning among male and female students was also looked into.

An empirical examination using Warp-PLS was conducted on the propositions among 286 engineering graduate students in Kerala, India, from January 2020 to March 2020.

The Warp-PLS examination reveals a positive association between lifelong learning and perceived employability and warrants the mediating role of lifelong learning in the association between human capital and perceived employability. A gendered variation on attitudinal differences towards lifelong learning is also looked into, and no difference between males and females is found.

The impact of lifelong learning on employability has been conceptually discussed before. This paper is the first attempt to empirically prove the same with a proper theoretical explanation.