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The purpose of this study is to investigate the structural relationships between protean career attitude, career resilience, proactive career behavior and external employability.

This study sampled 212 training apprentice employees who participated in training programs using a proportional stratified sampling in South Korea. The study tested the research model using structural equation modeling.

This study revealed that protean career attitude influenced external employability through career resilience and proactive career behavior. Career resilience fully mediated the relationship between protean career attitude and external employability and partially mediated protean career attitude and proactive career behavior. Proactive career behavior also mediated the relationship between protean career attitude and external employability.

This study has a limitation by relying on cross-sectional data. In terms of theoretical implications, this study can add new knowledge to the protean career research by demonstrating that the protean career attitude influences perceived external employability through career resilience and proactive career behavior for the sample of young training apprentice employees.

This study uncovers the dynamic processes between protean career attitude and perceived external employability. Moreover, this study’s sample is significant because training apprentice employees are mostly young in their 20s and 30s with less than three years of working experience and working in small and medium-sized enterprises in South Korea.

In a rapidly changing career landscape where lifelong job security is no longer guaranteed, this study investigates how audit firms play an important role in shaping their employees’ career perceptions and the subsequent effects on auditor behavior. Specifically, it explores the link between audit firms’ career development initiatives and auditors’ perceptions of external employability – an important determinant of auditor behavior. Using the framework of social exchange theory, the study investigates how perceived external employability affects both relational and operational behaviors of auditors.

The study employs structural equation modeling on survey data from 359 auditors.

The results indicate that when audit firms actively support career development, it positively contributes to auditors’ perceived external employability. A higher perceived external employability, in turn, leads to positive behavioral outcomes among auditors, including stronger relational behaviors (such as professional commitment) and operational behaviors (including heightened professional skepticism and reduced behaviors that could compromise audit quality).

This study uncovers a paradox where perceived external employability, typically viewed as a risk, emerges as a potent driver of desirable auditor behavior. In today’s dynamic career landscape, emphasizing individual-centered and flexible careers, these results highlight the benefits of perceived external employability. Rather than undermining audit services, increased perceived external employability driven by firm investments in auditors’ careers acts as a catalyst for desirable auditor behavior. Organizational support in terms of career development practices creates an environment where auditors are more committed, professionally skeptical and uphold the quality of audit services.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between protean career attitude and perceived internal and external employability, along with the mediating effect of learning-goal orientation.

Data were collected by distributing paper-based questionnaires to 527 workers in private banking sectors in Taiwan. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to examine the results of the relationships.

The results supported the idea that protean career attitude is a significant antecedent of perceived internal and external employability. Protean talents with a higher degree of protean attitude toward value-driven career orientation and self-directed career management have an external employability that is greater than their internal employability. Learning-goal orientation fully mediated the effect of protean career attitude on perceived internal employability, but only partially mediated external employability.

The findings can help human resource managers gain a better understanding of the use of an appropriate strategy to influence an employee’s perceived internal and external employability, which can increase the motivation and improve employer-employee relationships that contribute to organizational success and performance. Employees should recognize the increased importance of continuous learning with goal-setting in order to deal with changes at work.

This paper empirically establishes the association between protean career attitude and perceived internal and external employability. The protean career concept may provide organizations with a valuable perspective in the evolution of careers. Valuable and protean talents place an emphasis on individuals’ core values, and while learning goals are meant to suit employer organizations, they may also establish opportunities that could cross-organizational boundaries.

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.

In the current war for talent employers are concerned about the idea that the best employees are more likely to leave the organization for another employer (i.e. the management paradox). This study tests this management paradox. The purpose of this paper is to advance our understandings of how employees’ occupational expertise is associated with job search intensity, through its assumed relationships with perceived internal and external employability in the internal and the external labor market. The authors thereby tested the research model across three different age groups (young, middle-aged, and senior employees).

The authors conducted a survey among 2,137 professional workers and applied multi-group structural equation modeling.

Perceived internal employability negatively mediated the relationship between occupational expertise and job search intensity, whilst there was a positive mediational effect of perceived external employability. Age had a moderating effect on the association between perceived internal employability and job search intensity.

The findings contribute to the scholarly literature on the management paradox, and the empirical work on employability and age.

Organizations can recoup their investments in expert workers’ employability and enhance their retention by providing opportunities for internal career development.

This study is original by including both internal and external employability. By doing so, the authors thereby shedding new light on how occupational expertise might explain job search and how this relationship differs depending on employee age, thereby using a large sample of respondents.

Career plateau is a major concern for many seasoned employees because they often stay in the same position longer than expected and over time begin to lack job challenges. This phenomenon is now considered a normal stage in career development. The purpose of this study is to test the effects of two types of career plateau: hierarchical and job content on career commitment (career identity, career insight and career resilience), along with the mediating effect of perceived external employability. We also determined in the moderated mediation model if Super's (1957) three career stages amplify and attenuate the indirect effect of hierarchical/job content plateau on career commitment (career identity, career insight, career resilience) via perceived external employability.

We tested the hypotheses with survey data collected from a convenience sample of 472 white-collar full-time employees who also studied in the MBA and continuing education program in five large universities in Taiwan (77% return rate).

The mediation model result showed that perceived external employability partially and negatively mediated the influence of hierarchical plateaus on career commitment (career identity, career insight and career resilience). Perceived external employability partially and negatively mediated the influence of job content plateaus on career identity and career insight but fully and negatively mediated on career resilience. The result of the moderated mediation model also demonstrated that only employees in the trial stage had influences on the mediation relationships among the hierarchical plateau, perceived external employability and career commitment with its two dimensions of career identity and career insight only other than those in the stabilization and maintenance stages.

The findings of this study can benefit career management scholars and practitioners since they promote a better understanding of the career management practices that are relevant for seasoned employees who are valued for their knowledge, experience and expertise when encountering the three career stages.

Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theoretical perspective, we fill the gap in the literature by proposing perceived external employability as a mediator in the link between career plateau and career commitment and generalize the results to plateaued employees at the different career stages.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of career attitudes (traditional career vs boundaryless career) on perceived employability (internal vs external employability). In addition, the authors examine whether career self-management strategies act as mediators of these relationships. Due to high unemployment rates in the last two decades, it is important to assess the extent to which young graduates’ career attitudes affect perceived internal and external employability, along with the role of career self-management strategies as an employability enhancement tool.

As part of a cross-sectional research design, the authors administered a survey questionnaire to a sample of 131 graduates (i.e. master’s students) with at least one year of work experience. The empirical data were analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling, which combines confirmatory factor analysis, multiple linear regression and path analysis.

The results reveal that there is a positive and significant impact (direct effect) of a traditional career attitude (TCA) on internal employability, while there is no significant negative impact of a TCA on external employability. Additionally, the results show that there is a negative impact (direct effect) of a boundaryless career attitude (BCA) on internal employability, while no significant positive impact is found of a BCA on external employability. This study also confirms the mediation effect (full mediation) of career positioning strategies on the BCA-external employability relationship, and a partial mediation of career influence strategies on the TCA-internal employability relationship.

Limitations of this study relate to the sample size and the use of a convenience sampling technique. Hence, some caution is needed regarding results’ generalization. In addition, this research uses a cross-sectional design, thus the authors cannot assess longitudinal causal relationships between variables. Future research should be replicated with different types of respondents and in different cultural contexts.

The results suggest that organizations would benefit more from employees that hold a TCA than those that hold a BCA, especially if they are interested in fostering the internal employability of their workforce. At the individual level, the results identify optimal career self-management strategies (internal vs external employability) for young graduates.

This study offers new empirical evidence of the predictive value of perceived internal vs external employability and the mediating role of career self-management strategies in explaining employability. Young graduates perceive a TCA as more advantageous than a BCA for both internal and external employability. This is an unexpected but interesting finding, since the bulk of the literature on contemporary career attitudes overemphasizes the advantages of a BCA, while disregarding potential disadvantages for both individuals and organizations.

Employability concerns the extent to which people possess the skills and other attributes to find and stay in work of the kind they want. It is thought by many to be a key goal for individuals to aim for in managing their careers, and for organisations to foster in workforces. The purpose of this paper is to report on the development of a self‐report measure of individuals' perceived employability. It also seeks to examine its construct validity and correlates.

Based on the analysis of relevant literature, this study developed 16 items which were intended collectively to reflect employability within and outside the person's current organisation, based on his or her personal and occupational attributes. This study administered these items by questionnaire to 200 human resources professionals in the UK, along with established measures of career success and professional commitment, as well as questions reflecting demographic variables.

This article retained 11 of the 16 items for assessing self‐perceived employability. Concludes that self‐perceived employability can usefully be thought of as either a unitary construct, or one with two related components – internal (to the organisation) and external employability. The measure very successfully distinguished employability from professional commitment, and fairly successfully from career success. Only slight variations in employability could be attributed to demographic characteristics.

This research has begun to address the gap in the literature for a brief yet psychometrically adequate measure of self‐perceived individual employability.

This author believes that the scale can be applied to other occupational groups, in organisational consultancy, and in individual career development. It can be used either as one scale or two, depending on the purpose of the investigation.

Concludes that this research represents a psychometrically adequate contribution in an under‐researched field, and will lead to future research with other occupational samples, and in other settings.

Embedded in higher educational settings, work-integrated learning (WIL) is a key reflection to students' perceived employability. The purpose of this study is to explore the antecedents of internal and external perceived employability. The research attempts to test a theoretical model examining the relationships among human capital, work values, career self-management, internal perceived employability and external perceived employability.

Data were collected from 588 students who have internship experience from two self-financing higher education institutions in Hong Kong. We adopted structural equation modelling (SEM) to test the proposed research hypotheses.

Results support the idea that human capital and intrinsic work values are significant antecedents of perceived employability. Furthermore, this relationship is fully mediated by career self-management. The implications of the findings for understanding the process through which psychological variables affect an individual's perceived employability are discussed.

Previous studies have extensively examined the effectiveness of WIL in increasing graduates' employability. However, unclear focus has been given to examine psychological attributes, such as human capital, work values and career self-management in WIL. In addition, few researchers have empirically examined the linkages among human capital, work values, career self-management and employability through internships or WIL experiences. Therefore, to bridge these gaps, the present study examines the effect of human capital, work values and career self-management on students' perceived employability when gaining internships or WIL experiences in a higher education setting.

The purpose of this paper is to examine selection practices of school districts by capturing the promotion of teachers to assistant principal positions to determine if: there is a relationship between employability and assistant principal promotion (within-school, within-district, and external); and if the state-specific educational leadership policy directly impacts the employability of assistant principal candidates.

Principals in the state of Georgia were the unit of analysis, and data collected included personal characteristics of each participant when entering their first assistant principal position, school characteristics of the place of promotion, and type of promotion (internally within-school, internally within-district, and externally). Both descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis were utilized to examine the impact of type of promotion as well as the state-specific educational leadership policy on participant employability at the time of promotion.

This study found a significant positive relationship between internal promotion (within-school) and employability as well as a negative association between participant employability and Georgia state-specific policy. Additional findings indicate a positive relationship between combination schools (i.e. grades K-8; 6-12) and participant employability.

This study advances the HRM literature concerning employee selection by expanding the scope of hiring practices outside of the private sector and provides focus on the public sector, specifically, the public school environment. In addition, the focal position (public school administrators in the state of Georgia) has yet to be utilized in employee selection research in the areas of internal and external promotion. Previous researchers have studied the probability of internal and external promotion based on demographic factors such as race and gender, however, this specific study uses distinctive predictor variables backed by literature to evaluate applicant employability.