Career readiness: developing graduate employability capitals in aspiring media workers

Abstract

Teaching students aspiring to media work presents the educator with a fundamental dilemma. On the one hand, students require the knowledge and skills necessary to find and sustain employment within existing industry practices, systems and structures. On the other hand, students need to be prepared for the uncertain and shifting nature of media work, and highly problematic aspects of some of those selfsame practices, systems and structures. How do you ensure the former without condoning or under-playing the latter? An overly theoretical and critical education risks producing graduates unprepared for the practicalities of media employment. An overly instrumental education risks graduates lacking the necessary responsiveness and resilience required to drive a media career over time, or the ability to recognise, navigate or challenge systemic problems within these industries. This article approaches the dilemma from the UK perspective, through a consideration of the notion of employability, interpreted as career readiness. It advocates five interrelated forms of graduate capital: human capital; social capital; cultural capital; psychological capital and identity capital. The article argues that their application to aspiring media workers, in particular, provides a valuable conceptual framework for educators concerned with finding an approach to employability that is both instrumental and critical.

New Approaches to the Investigation of Language Teaching and Literature

“…According to Wallis (2021), aspiring media workers need to be prepared for the changing nature of media work, therefore they need the skills to adapt to a career over time and be a flexible workforce. Higher education needs to prepare students for the established industry practices and the shifting and evolving nature of media employment.…”

“…Higher education needs to prepare students for the established industry practices and the shifting and evolving nature of media employment. For such, education needs to improve "graduate capital" (human capital; social capital; cultural capital; psychological capital and identity capital) (Wallis, 2021). This means that students need skills, they need to interact with others, have networking abilities, understand the cultural aspects of the work environment and position themselves in the job market to have "career readiness" (Wallis, 2021).…”

Graduate Employability of Business Students

“…In some cases, students are not aware of the skills required by the labour market (Dolce et al 2020;Lockett and Feng 2019;Amoroso and Burke 2018). As a result, students tend to both inflate and underestimate their employability skills (Gawrycka et al 2020;Wallis 2021). A study on Vietnam found that employers were not satisfied with graduates' employability assets during recruitment, and graduating students had poor understanding of the real needs of the labour market (T. T. Tran 2017).…”

“…Unlike all the other skills studied in this paper, the difference in scores across the nine different types of academic skills was not significant (F = 0.559, p = 0.812), suggesting that students probably gave themselves high scores across any indicators classified as 'academic skills'. Several studies have found that students do overestimate their academic capabilities and competencies (Wallis 2021;McArthur et al 2017;Koys et al 2019).…”

Effects of career development learning on students’ perceived employability: a longitudinal study

“…Previous research on employability has acknowledged the importance of holistic approaches to this topic, specifically approaches that take into account a combination of resources beyond a skill-centric focus (Cole & Donald, 2022 ), including factors such as personal characteristics, academic achievements and graduate skills (Byrne, 2022 ). Among various such approaches, a focus on capital — such as human capital (Schultz, 1961 ) — has been widely adopted to understand the resources that are necessary to promote graduates’ career readiness (Wallis, 2021 ). Human capital theory implies that education is a form of individual investment aimed at obtaining explicit returns regarding the individual’s career path, with the purpose of ensuring that individuals, by investing in their education, develop their human capital to increase their competitiveness in the labour market (Cai, 2013 ; Nimmi et al, 2021 ).…”