Graduate employability: Outcomes of an intervention

Graduate employability is an important issue for higher education as the global financial crisis has led to a significant decline in the employment prospects of new graduates over the past few years. This issue is additionally important due to the reported dissatisfaction of many employers with graduates’ ability to contribute effectively to the workplace. This research seeks to address these problems by exploring the skills needs of recent science graduates and their employers, and designing interventions that will inculcate such skills and attributes into undergraduate students via the curricula. In this presentation, we report on the outcomes of an intervention designed to address the skills needs and analyse if it had any impact on students’ notions of employability. The intervention, conducted as a day-long workshop, was delivered to three groups of third- and fourth-year students. We used quantitative data to track possible differences in students’ self-perceptions of their employability following participation in the intervention. In addition, qualitative data, collected through students’ reflective notes, provided insights into how they perceived the value of the intervention in improving their self-perceived employability. Both data types indicate a positive impact of this type of intervention on students’ perception of their employability and related underpinning skills. Our findings call for a broader integration and evaluation of targeted ‘employability’ workshops into senior undergraduate or capstone-style curricula.