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The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of noncognitive skills on educational mismatch in the context of China and to further explore the potential mechanisms concerning how noncognitive skills determine mismatch outcomes.

This paper uses the Chinese Family Panel Survey of 2018, which provides the Big Five Personality Inventory to assess respondents' noncognitive skills and contains information on educational mismatch. The authors estimate the effects of noncognitive skills on educational mismatch by means of a probit model. Additionally, the correlated random effects (CRE) model and instrumental variable (IV) approach have also been exploited in the robust checks.

The findings show that the composite score of noncognitive skills reduces the probability of being overeducated and, conversely, increases the likelihood of being undereducated. When distinguishing the effects of different personality traits, the authors find significantly negative effects of agreeableness and openness on overeducation and a positive effect of openness on undereducation. With regard to heterogeneous analysis, the effects of noncognitive skills on educational mismatch exist mostly among white-collar employees and employees with fewer than 5 years of work experience. Finally, the authors provide two likely mechanisms related to job search effort and social capital, followed by the presentation of supporting evidence.

The results of this paper underline the importance of noncognitive skills in raising the quality of jobs that individuals can obtain. This suggests that the development of noncognitive skills should be encouraged to be integrated into formal education systems and social job training programs in China.

Despite a growing interest in its consequences in the labor market, the role of noncognitive skills in determining educational mismatch has rarely been discussed in developing countries. This study provides the first evidence regarding the effects of noncognitive skills on education mismatch in China. It contributes to the research on noncognitive skills' labor market outcomes and enhances the understanding of the factors driving educational mismatch.

The existence of mismatches between training and jobs is relatively common and is accentuated in times of crisis where unemployment is growing. The negative effects that this phenomenon can generate on both workers and the economy makes its study relevant. The objective of this research is to analyse whether graduates of the Catalan university system have jobs according to their educational level.

This paper sees how graduates’ own and acquired characteristics influence the probability of a mismatch from the analysis of the microdata of different waves of the employment insertion survey conducted by the Agència per a la Qualitat del Sistema Universitari de Catalunya (AQU).

The main conclusions focus on confirming that more humanities-oriented degrees tend to have a higher level of mismatch while technology or medicine approach a perfect fit. Therefore, bringing the education and business systems together is important to reduce this gap. Meanwhile, in terms of activities, services such as hospitality and retail have historically been sectors with a poor fit, and what has happened with Catalan graduates has not been an exception.

The main contribution of the research has been to highlight where there is a greater mismatch from the point of view of training, the type of work and its evolution over time, detecting the need to adjust labour supply and demand.

This study aims to investigate the importance of lifelong learning in cultivating competent human capital, fostering long-term career sustainability and promoting gender equality in Bangladesh.

This study has used a qualitative research methodology with inductive reasoning. The researchers used purposive sampling to conduct semi-structured interviews with 34 male and female students at the graduate and undergraduate levels, in addition to six stakeholders. This research is grounded in the theoretical frameworks of human capital development theory and gender and development theory.

The results suggest that there exists a positive correlation between lifelong learning, sustainable career development and gender equality in the context of Bangladesh. Successfully executing strategies might also play a significant role in attaining Bangladesh’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Educational curriculum reform within institutions is urgently needed, necessitating the active involvement and influential contributions of actors and stakeholders. Implementing lifelong learning must also align with gender equality and SDGs.

This study addresses a significant gap in the existing literature by offering insights into the relationship between lifelong learning, career sustainability and gender equality within the specific context of Bangladesh. This study provides valuable contributions to scholars, stakeholders and policymakers while establishing a foundation for future research endeavors.

Young graduates in Morocco are encountering an increasingly challenging labor market environment. Confronted with intense competition, job insecurity, and unclear career trajectories, many find themselves in low-skilled positions despite possessing relevant qualifications. This issue is particularly pronounced among vocational training graduates, who experience professional downgrading at a rate three times higher (33.6%) compared to their peers from general education (11.6%) (HCP, 2018). Our study aims to investigate professional downgrading among young vocational training graduates in Morocco, focusing on the factors contributing to this phenomenon and identifying potential solutions to address it.

Our study is based on the insertion and career path survey conducted by the Department of Professional Training with graduates of professional training programs in Morocco. For this edition, the survey was conducted in 2020, encompassing all 31,498 graduates of the 2016 professional training programs. The Heckman self-selection model is employed to analyze and explore various dimensions of downgrading. Factors such as gender, age, marital status, parental education, and the choice of vocational training field are scrutinized to understand their influence on downgrading.

The study reveals several key findings: Women exhibit a lower probability of professional downgrading compared to men. Young graduates are more vulnerable to downgrading, emphasizing the necessity for career guidance and mentorship programs to facilitate their entry into the job market. Marital status plays a role, with married individuals having a higher likelihood of downgrading. Parental education, particularly that of mothers, proves critical in preventing subjective downgrading of vocational training graduates, highlighting the need for adult literacy and education programs. The effectiveness of the National Agency for the Promotion of Employment and Competencies (ANAPEC) programs in preventing downgrading among vocational training graduates is questioned, suggesting the need for program revisions tailored to this population. The choice of vocational training field significantly impacts downgrading, with graduates of technical training programs experiencing advantages. This emphasizes the importance of diversifying training fields and aligning them with market demands.

This study provides valuable insights into the phenomenon of professional downgrading among young vocational training graduates in Morocco. The findings emphasize the need for targeted policy interventions. Recommendations include supporting young graduates, reassessing programs offered by the ANAPEC, and enhancing technical training to better align with the evolving demands of the labor market.

The purpose of the study is to identify the soft skills and abilities that are crucial to success in the fields of operations management (OM) and supply chain management (SCM), using the O*NET database and the classification of a set of professional figures integrating values for task skills and abilities needed to operate successfully in these professions.

The study used the O*NET database to identify the soft skills and abilities required for success in OM and SCM industries. Correlation analysis was conducted to determine the tasks required for the job roles and their characteristics in terms of abilities and soft skills. ANOVA analysis was used to validate the findings. The study aims to help companies define specific assessments and tests for OM and SCM roles to measure individual attitudes and correlate them with the job position.

As a result of the work, a set of soft skills and abilities was defined that allow, through correlation analysis, to explain a large number of activities required to work in the operations and SCM (OSCM) environment.

The work is inherently affected by the database used for the professional figures mapped and the scores that are attributed within O*NET to the analyzed elements.

The information resulting from this study can help companies develop specific assessments and tests for the roles of OM and SCM to measure individual attitudes and correlate them with the requirements of the job position. The study aims to address the need to identify soft skills in the human sphere and determine which of them have the most significant impact on the OM and SCM professions.

The originality of this study lies in its approach to identify the set of soft skills and abilities that determine success in the OM and SCM industries. The study used the O*NET database to correlate the tasks required for specific job roles with their corresponding soft skills and abilities. Furthermore, the study used ANOVA analysis to validate the findings in other sectors mapped by the same database. The identified soft skills and abilities can help companies develop specific assessments and tests for OM and SCM roles to measure individual attitudes and correlate them with the requirements of the job position. In addressing the necessity for enhanced clarity in the domain of human factor, this study contributes to identifying key success factors. Subsequent research can further investigate their practical application within companies to formulate targeted growth strategies and make appropriate resource selections for vacant positions.

Organizations are increasingly joining inter-organizational networks to foster sustainable employability for their employees. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors and mechanisms central to their success as experienced by key stakeholders.

An explorative, qualitative approach was adopted, using four focus groups with network coordinators (N = 18) and HR professionals (N = 14). Fourteen Dutch inter-organizational networks were represented. Respondents were recruited through purposive and snowballing sampling techniques. Thematic analysis was applied using open coding to generate themes.

The results of this study outline environmental, structural, and inter-personal factors and mechanisms that contribute to the success of inter-organizational networks that aim to foster sustainable employability for their employees. The environmental factors and mechanisms consist of challenges stemming from the labor market. The structural factors and mechanisms include: a network’s flat structure, flat fee, lack of informal rules, the allocation of roles and expectations for stakeholders and shared network activities. Lastly, the inter-personal factors and mechanisms are: communication among stakeholders, establishing reciprocity, interaction and collaboration between stakeholders, the valuation of trust, a convivial culture and shared vision among stakeholders. The dynamics between these factors and mechanisms are compared to other forms of inter-organizational networks. Furthermore, several recommendations for network coordinators and practitioners regarding the development of networks are presented.

This study provides insights into the factors and mechanisms that are regarded by stakeholders as influencing the success of inter-organizational networks in their ability to foster sustainable employability for workers. We have identified a unique model that captures this new way of inter-organizational collaboration and builds on insights from literature on collaborative governance regimes, institutional fields and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Specifically, the model provides a framework that consists of environmental, structural and interpersonal factors and mechanisms for network success. This study increases our understanding of how collaborative efforts can be fostered beyond organizational boundaries and existing Human Resource Management practices.

Publicly available datasets in the USA present data suppression issues that limit the ability to investigate entrepreneurial subgroups like military veterans, which account for about one in ten entrepreneurs in the USA. Thus, despite public desire to support veteran entrepreneurs (“vetrepreneurs”), there is a limited descriptive understanding on the relationship between veteran business owner demographics, such as gender and race, and their business survival and growth. We address this limited understanding in this article by providing descriptive evidence on veteran-owned business survival and growth, emphasizing variation across race and gender.

We use limited-access longitudinal microdata to provide descriptive evidence on the survival and growth of veteran-owned firms across race and gender.

Findings indicate statistically significant variation across demographic subgroups’ business survival and employment growth. For example, veteran-owned firms have high women ownership rates, greater employment, revenues and payrolls, but also lower employment and revenue growth. More generally we provide descriptive evidence that military experience or the military community help women overcome the gender gap in small business survival.

This type of descriptive research is common among entrepreneurial researchers, however, peer-reviewed research specific to US veterans is very limited. These descriptive results are useful for policymakers and for spurring future policy research related to veteran entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this paper is to research the impact of digitalization on employees' future competencies and the conditional role of human resource development (HRD) in the relationship between independent and dependent variables.

Empirical research covered 1209 enterprises from all of Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic. The research was conducted from 2019 to 2021. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), a theoretical model was tested and verified.

Confirmatory factor analysis has shown a good fit for the tested model. The purpose and character of our data showed a good alignment with the SEM partial least squares method, as the goal is to predict a construct. The model showed that employee-oriented digitalization positively affected the employees' future competencies, with no impact of customer-oriented digitalization treated as a control variable. Also, the moderating role of HRD has not been shown to be significant for the “digitalization – competencies” relationship.

Previous studies on the development of personnel competencies treated these competencies as antecedents of digital transformation and examined the formal role of HRD in building the competencies. The novelty of this study lies in exploring the pattern of interactions among the impact of an environment built by innovative technologies and HRD on the competencies of the future. Also, the research embedded in the environment of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia has contributed to the complex understanding of the transition to digitalization, as this region has often been omitted in the field of human resource management (HRM) research focused on exploring digital transformation.

In this study, the authors explore students' and industry’s perceptions about the challenges and opportunities of participating in a large-scale, non-compulsory, individual, in-person and unpaid business placement programme at an Australian university. The placement programme aims to support students' workplace transition by emphasising the development of key employability skills through reflective learning and linking theory to practice.

Utilising a case study methodology and integrating survey questionnaires, the authors collected both quantitative and qualitative data with large sample sizes.

The results highlight curriculum areas for improvement, emphasising tailored feedback to manage placement expectations and addressing employability skill strengths and weaknesses.

Recommendations include co-partnering with students to develop short, tailored and hot tip videos along with online learning modules, including the presentation of evidence-based statistics to inform students about post-programme employment prospects.

The study contributes to benchmarking good practices in non-compulsory, individual, in-person and unpaid placement pedagogy within the business education context.

Our work adds to the debate regarding higher education graduates’ skills required in the labour market in Germany and beyond.

Using Q-methodology and the accompanying narrations, we explore German employers’ and employees’ views (N = 26) on characteristics required at the entry level.

Our findings show three areas of the labour market with different skill requirements. Whereas the first area, “The world of rules”, applies more likely to the professions and academia, the two other areas, “The middle field” and “The people-oriented and critical market”, can be found throughout the labour market. The disciplinary affiliation does not play a role. In all three areas, soft skills are crucial and specialised knowledge is only highly valued in the area of “The world of rules”.

In contrast to previous findings, we do not focus on singular skills. Instead, we focus on skill sets and discuss their relevance from the background of their usability.