The personal equipment and social ecologies needed for successful employability: an exploration of perceptions among undergraduate social sciences students.

Williams, G ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-9289, Karanika-Murray, M ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4141-3747, Reed, H ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-2281-1175 and Wiseman, H, 2024. The personal equipment and social ecologies needed for successful employability: an exploration of perceptions among undergraduate social sciences students. Cogent Psychology, 11 (1): 2344356.

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Abstract

Objectives: There is a range of factors that could affect an undergraduate students’ progress in being able to identify and capitalise on their employability prospects. These factors could be influenced by how the students see themselves and their capabilities and the value of undertaking certain employability activities. Our research sought to explore how students perceived their employability and the factors underpinning such perceptions.

Method: Undergraduate Social Sciences students took part. Perceptions of employability were obtained from two cohorts at the same university. Cohort 1 comprised 30 students across eight focus group interviews, which were conducted in 2013. Cohort 2 comprised 43 students across 11 focus groups with data collected in 2021.

Results: Reflexive Thematic Analysis was used to extract two major themes: (1) Having the right ‘equipment’ for successful employability and (2) Social ecological factors. The first theme included taking responsibility, having self-confidence and relevant skills, recognising that experience could be more important than knowledge, having a clear identity, being passionate about a field, and self-awareness. The second theme comprised three sub-themes: (1) Microsystem direct influences on a student’s employability, (2) Dysfunctional mesosystems when microsystems around student employability clash, and (3) Macrosystem indirect wider national social influences on employability.

Conclusions: Implications for bolstering employability support include recognising the social ecologies surrounding students and the need for consistent messaging across microsystems that students are likely to encounter; more harmonious mesosystems should be created to help students to obtain more personalised, time-sensitive knowledge and skills to use on their employability journeys.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Cogent Psychology
Creators:	Williams, G., Karanika-Murray, M., Reed, H. and Wiseman, H.
Publisher:	Cogent OA
Date:	24 April 2024
Volume:	11
Number:	1
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1080/23311908.2024.2344356 DOI 1888426 Other
Rights:	This is an open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unre-stricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	24 Apr 2024 16:07
Last Modified:	25 Apr 2024 07:42
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/51331

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