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The purpose of this paper is to provide an authentic and relevant way of sharing our realisation of the significance of integrating employability skills in assessment practice. This is supported from the anecdotal evidence received from students, which show that the inclusion and assessment of employability skills has provided them with an artifact that demonstrates the employability skills required for the continually changing future and workplace. For staff, the ability to assess and give feedback on the acquisition of employability skills makes it a more enjoyable experience.

Due to the short rollout period and pivot to online learning, there has not been an opportunity to undertake a comprehensive and formal data collection. However, anecdotal evidence has been collected from students and staff on the experience of the student-created video assignment in a completely online environment.

This paper establishes how a student video assessment contributes to students’ acquisition, development and enhancement of employability skills, such as communication and teamwork skills, that are central for preparing students for continually evolving future and thus the “new normal” brought forward by COVID-19.

This paper enables the authors to share their experiences and provision of their resources so that other teaching academics are able to design their own assessment task that contributes to students’ acquisition, development and enhancement of employability skills.

The originality of this paper is the application of integrating employability skills in assessment practice and the associated rubric as way to build students’ employability skills in the post-COVID world.

The paper aims to explore employability in business as perceived by Generation Z (late millennials) business students and faculty. It focuses on perceptions regarding necessary employability skills from the diverse standpoints of two different groups of stakeholders within one Higher Education Institution.

The paper uses a Mixed Qualitative Design approach including a core and a supplementary component; Generation Z student perceptions are initially identified through a thematic analysis of students’ research reports on employability. These perceptions are then further contextualized through findings from a series of personal interviews conducted with Generation X academics in the same institution.

The findings support the two basic dimensions of perceived employability, work readiness and employability skills, for which students and educators hold similar notions. Both stakeholders distinguish between “hard” and “soft” skills, but filter their relative importance through a generational lens. An emerging finding was the link between personality traits and perceived employability skills.

The paper examines the much-debated issue of perceived employability through the eyes of Generation Z students; research on employability perceptions of Generation Z is, to date, limited. The topic is timely, as Generation Z is the newest generation entering the business job market. In addition, the paper adds to the emerging contemporary stream of literature exploring employability in the field of business education.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the indexes of employability assets that affect students' employability in Indigenous contexts.

The study restructures the indicators developed from the survey the authors did for the Vital Outcome Indicators for Community Engagement (VOICE) research project into six employability indexes. The six indexes are reading and comprehension, numeracy, technological mastery, contribution to organizational performance, job searching skills and cultural awareness. The study has applied mixed research method, which is the combination of survey and secondary data analyses.

All six indexes have impacts on students' employability in various degrees with a high level of internal consistency among the indicators. The regression analysis reveals that the technological mastery, reading and comprehension and numeracy indexes significantly influence students' contribution to the organizational performance. The results also show that cultural awareness has impacts on employability but students do not connect it to the required employability skills. Such disconnection of cultural awareness with employability skills justifies the necessity to integrate Indigenous cultural contents into programs and curriculums in today's post-secondary education, particularly in the University College of the North (UCN), improving students' cultural knowledge, which, in return, enhances their employability in Indigenous contexts. The result is also applicable globally to countries which have large populations of Indigenous people such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Colombia, Mexico and other regions where workplaces are set in Indigenous contexts.

The research survey was only conducted within students of UCN Thompson campus.

The results of this paper can be used as a guideline to adjust teaching/learning strategies with a focus on integrating Indigenous cultural components into UCN courses and programs, including other institutions with similar attributes to enhance Indigenous students' employability. UCN tri-council, faculty, community leaders, researchers, government and NGOs can also use the outcome of this paper to articulate polices that enhance students' employability. The outcome and strategic implication of the study can also be applicable to any institutions in a global Indigenous context.

The authors of the paper provide empirical evidence from the indexes of the employability assets including their indicators affecting students' employability. It is attested that cultural awareness index have impacts on students' employability in Indigenous context.

In the UK, concern frequently has been voiced that young people lack appropriate employability skills. One way to address this is to provide work based placements. In general, previous research findings have indicated that young people find such placements useful because of help with career choice and relevant skills. However, most studies are retrospective and involve sixth form or degree students. The purpose of this paper is to extend previous research by collecting information before and after the placements.

This investigation involved questionnaires with nearly 300 14-15 year-old students who provided a pre- and post-placement self-reports about their employability skills and their work-experience hosts provided ratings of employability skills at the end of the placement.

There was a significant increase in student ratings of their employability skills from before to after the placement, and although the employers gave slightly lower ratings of some employability skills than the students, the two sets of ratings were reasonably close. In addition, the students had high expectations of the usefulness of the placements and these expectations were fulfilled as reported in the post-placement questionnaire.

These positive findings, extend the knowledge of the effects of work based placements, by focussing on the opinion of the young people themselves, using a pre- to post-placement design, by validating student self-reports with host employer ratings, and by focussing on a younger than usual age group.

The purpose of this article is to examine the role of social capital and higher order meta-skills in developing the employability of marketing students at a UK university.

This conceptual article, bolstered by illustrative primary data, provides a broader conceptualisation of employability. This is to address the specific research question on how social capital (contacts and connections) is deployed (via capability-based higher order meta-skills) in a UK university developing the employability of a specific group of students. The article is situated in the highly fraught context of teaching excellence measurement schemes [such as the teaching excellence framework (TEF) in the UK].

The research findings highlighted the role of social capital and higher order meta-skills in developing the employability of marketing students at a UK university.

While the illustrative primary data are not generalisable, as they are limited to one group of marketing students in one UK university; the conceptual development, including a new social capital based definition of employability that incorporated the capabilities, provided by higher-order meta-skills, is widely applicable.

The article has highlighted how the impact of social capital, etiquette and meta-skills, while being “between the lines” of the employability discourse and the metrics of the TEF, explains the differing perceptions of the value of employability initiatives. The article highlights the grey area of between the reasons given as to why some candidates are valued over others. Perhaps no rhyme or reason sometimes, just the “hidden” perception/interpretations of the interview panel of the “qualities” of one candidate over another.

The difficulty in ascertaining the influence of social capital (and how it can be deployed through higher-order meta-skills as capabilities) results in challenges for universities as they endeavour to respond to the data requirements of “learning gain” within teaching excellent measurement schemes such as the UK teaching excellence framework.

The purpose of this paper is to explore an employability enhancement initiative, the Additional Skills Acquisition Programme (ASAP) project in the state of Kerala, India, as a case for the inclusive development of employability in college and university students.

ASAP is applied as a case study to examine the employability enhancement initiative in India.

Participation in the ASAP project led to increased measures of employability. These increases were most pronounced in women and individuals living below the poverty line. Partnerships between educational institutions and organisations focusing on students’ technical and skill development can help overcome local and national talent shortages.

The theoretical implications come from addressing the lack of representation of skills based employability initiatives among students from India in the vocational behaviour literature. Practical implications come from knowledge sharing of innovative strategies to enhance the employability outcomes of individuals entering the labour market. New ways to overcome the reported mismatch in business education between curriculum content and the development of employability skills in graduates are presented. Benefits for diversity and inclusion are also provided.

This study attempts to investigate the interrelationship between choice-based educational achievement and employability prospects across the skill-based occupations amongst the youth in India.

This study relies on the use of National Sample Survey (NSS) data on employment and unemployment for the 68th round (2011–2012) and the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) (2017–2018). To estimate the relative contributions of choice-based educational attainment affecting the skill-based employment of youth in a different category of occupations ( high/medium/low skilled), the multinomial logistic regression and its marginal effects have been used.

The study finds educational attainment both as an opportunity (improvising employability in the high and medium skill occupation) and a challenge (highest unemployment amongst the educated) while ensuring skill-based youth employability. Despite the growing enrolment of youth in education, youth from a general education background does not find sustained employability prospects in high-skill occupations.

Vocational education highlights a brighter employability prospect but the acceptability of the same amongst the youth needs a policy intervention.

Educational choices need an intervention based on market-driven apprenticeships and training.

The decline of overall employability in the low-skill occupation raises a threat to inclusive development as such youth results to Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET), better identified as the unproductive economic youth.

This study attempts to investigate that “how far the choice of educational attainment (general/technical/vocational) is able to make youth a fit in the world of work?” in the Indian context, where the youth constitute the highest share in the population.

The purpose of this study is to explore employability skills that employers, university lecturers and graduates value to bring to the workplace, when graduates are applying for entry‐level graduate jobs in the field of computer science in Sri Lanka.

A total of three samples were selected for this exploratory study, namely, graduates, employers, and university lecturers. Three self‐administered survey questionnaires were developed targeting the three groups. In addition to descriptive statistics, paired sample t‐test, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and correlation analysis were used for the data analysis.

The findings suggested that there are differences in the priorities given for employability skills by the four groups – male graduates, female graduates, employers, and university lecturers. Further, the findings suggest that employability skills are influenced by the gender of the graduates. Overall, the findings of the study could be used to assist universities, graduates, employers, and career advisers in applying strategic decisions in managing graduates' careers.

Although a considerable amount of the literature addresses employability skills, much of the information is theoretical in nature and offers policy recommendations and prescriptive advice. Further, a majority of the research studies has primarily examined the experiences of a particular higher educational institute where remedial actions were taken to impart employability skills. The paper presents findings of a survey that investigated and compared employability skills that employers, university lecturers and graduates value to bring to the workplace when graduates are applying for entry‐level graduate jobs.

The main purpose of this study was to develop and test an employability scale in a Chinese context. Moreover, the authors investigated how socioeconomic status indicators (education and occupation of parents, household income and hukou, i.e. household registration location) affect the endowment and development of adolescents' employability skills in China.

Data were collected via paper-based surveys from 1,146 vocational school students in rural and urban areas in China at two points in time one year apart. The authors developed a scale to measure employability skills in China and conducted general linear modeling to test the hypotheses.

The findings indicate that adolescents whose parents have more education, highly skilled occupations, relatively affluent household income and urban hukou are more likely to attain higher employability skills than those from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds. Moreover, adolescents with these background characteristics tend to improve their employability skills more than those without such characteristics. This suggests that social capital may further widen the inequality gap among adolescents.

The framework of employability skills focuses on the general basic transferable employability skills of vocational students. Future studies could develop measures of employability skills for college graduates and widen the measurements of social capital based on the study’s findings. The findings suggest that higher education institutions should be encouraged to integrate resources to improve education inequality between rural and urban regions to the disparity in adolescents' employability skills development.

Building on Western frameworks, the study defines and develops an employability scale in the Chinese context that can be a practical measurement tool for researchers, educators and policymakers. The authors investigated the endowment and development of employability skills in relation to social capital. Exposure to social capital tends to affect an individual's skills and capability development at an early stage, and in the long term, this calls attention to access to quality education between rural and urban youth.

The purpose of this paper is to report on research findings from a teaching and learning intervention that explored whether undergraduate university students can be taught to articulate their employability skills effectively to prospective employers and to retain this ability post-course.

The study included 3,400 students in 44 courses at a large Canadian university. Stage 1 involved a course-level teaching and learning intervention with the experimental student group, which received employability skills articulation instruction. Stage 2 involved an online survey administered six months post-course to the experimental group and the control group. Both groups responded to two randomly generated questions using the Situation/Task, Actions, Result (STAR) format, a format that employers commonly rely on to assess job candidates’ employability skills. The researchers compared the survey responses from the experimental and control groups.

Survey results demonstrate that previous exposure to the STAR format was the only significant factor affecting students’ skills articulation ability. Year of study and program (co-operative or non-co-operative) did not influence articulation.

The findings suggest that universities should integrate institution-wide, course-level employability skills articulation assignments for students in all years of study and programs (co-op and non-co-op).

This research is novel because its study design combines practical, instructional design with empirical research of significant scope (institution-wide) and participant size (3,400 students), contributing quantitative evidence to the employability skills articulation discussion. By surveying students six months post-course, the study captures whether articulation instruction can be recalled, an ability of particular relevance for career preparedness.