Signaling standout graduate employability: the employer perspective
Signaling standout graduate employability: the employer perspective
This study examines employers' graduate employability expectations. In an overcrowded graduate labour market, employers must distinguish between equally qualified graduates to determine ‘standout employability’. Grounded in a dramaturgical perspective, we integrate concepts of skilful social action with signaling theory to extend the processual conceptualization of graduate employability. We report a qualitative abductive analysis of employers' expectations of graduates' employability performances. We theorise that employers frame and decode signals of standout employability from graduates' narrations of experientially referenced skilful social action. These form the dramaturgical backdrop from which employers infer unique personal brand assets and qualities they associate with standout employability. Our analysis has important implications for higher education (HE), human resource management and career counselling practitioners. It indicates that the employability value of non-HE experience is as a backdrop for the dramaturgical performance of graduate employability rather than for the acquisition of work-related skills or the enablement of work ready behaviours.
dramaturgy, graduate employability, signaling theory, work experience
675-693
Anderson, Valerie
9149ac19-c4f8-4fb1-866b-69b8fc51c0e3
Tomlinson, Michael
9dd1cbf0-d3b0-421e-8ded-b3949ebcee18
July 2021
Anderson, Valerie
9149ac19-c4f8-4fb1-866b-69b8fc51c0e3
Tomlinson, Michael
9dd1cbf0-d3b0-421e-8ded-b3949ebcee18
Anderson, Valerie and Tomlinson, Michael
(2021)
Signaling standout graduate employability: the employer perspective.
Human Resource Management Journal, 31 (3), .
(doi:10.1111/1748-8583.12334).
Abstract
This study examines employers' graduate employability expectations. In an overcrowded graduate labour market, employers must distinguish between equally qualified graduates to determine ‘standout employability’. Grounded in a dramaturgical perspective, we integrate concepts of skilful social action with signaling theory to extend the processual conceptualization of graduate employability. We report a qualitative abductive analysis of employers' expectations of graduates' employability performances. We theorise that employers frame and decode signals of standout employability from graduates' narrations of experientially referenced skilful social action. These form the dramaturgical backdrop from which employers infer unique personal brand assets and qualities they associate with standout employability. Our analysis has important implications for higher education (HE), human resource management and career counselling practitioners. It indicates that the employability value of non-HE experience is as a backdrop for the dramaturgical performance of graduate employability rather than for the acquisition of work-related skills or the enablement of work ready behaviours.
Text
19-HRMJ-05069.R4_Proof_hi (1)
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 18 November 2020
e-pub ahead of print date: 8 December 2020
Published date: July 2021
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
The support of Office for Students/HEFCE for the project from which this study has been undertaken is acknowledged: Education as transformation: Exploring stakeholders' conceptions of learning gain, and developing measures of non-cognitive development? HEFCE/OfS 2016-18.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Keywords:
dramaturgy, graduate employability, signaling theory, work experience
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 445251
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/445251
ISSN: 0954-5395
PURE UUID: 7ddd8afe-9d8b-45e7-8b9f-55aaba25ec1c
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Date deposited: 26 Nov 2020 17:31
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 06:06
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Author:
Valerie Anderson
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