Bridging pre-professional identities: the contribution of trustworthiness and academic socialisation to undergraduates’ employability

Abstract

Purpose: the evolving dynamics of the labour market make graduates’ future employability an important issue for higher education (HE) institutions, prompting universities to complement the conventional graduate skills approach with a wider focus on graduate forms of capital that may enhance their sense of employability. This study, adopting a capital perspective, explores whether and how teachers in HE, when acknowledged as knowledgeable trustworthy actors, may affect graduates’ employability. It investigates how they can mobilise undergraduate cultural capital through socialisation, and shape their pre-professional identity, paving the way for university-to-work transition. 

Design/methodology/approach: to test the hypothesised model, a self-report online questionnaire was administered to a sample of 616 undergraduates attending different Italian universities. Multiple mediating models were tested using the SEM framework. 

Findings: results supported the tested model and showed that trust in knowledgeable HE teachers was associated with undergraduates’ perceived employability both directly and through both mediators (i.e. academic socialisation and identification with future professionality). 

Research limitations/implications: this research explores a capital conceptualisation of graduate employability, identifying possible processes for implementing graduates’ capital across their academic experience and providing initial evidence of their interplay and contribution to transition into the labour market. 

Originality/value: these findings provide empirical support to possible forms of capital that HE institutions may fulfil to enhance their undergraduate employability throughout their academic career, which serves as a liminal space allowing undergraduates to begin building a tentative professional identity.

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