The Impact of Employability Initiatives in Higher Education: Using Placement Confidence and Resilience as Measures

Employability skills are needed in addition to subject specific knowledge to support graduates in their career choices and employment. Placement is widely recognized as a key facilitator of graduate employability skills and employment with an expectation that students will have more than an academic qualification (degree) to secure employment (Yorke, 2006; Saunders and Zuzel, 2010). A large body of literature has emerged outlining the key attributes and skills a typical graduate should possess and why, (Harvey et al, 1997; Little, 2001; Lees, 2002; Holden and Jameson, 2002; Rothwell and Arnold, 2007; Wiley, 2014). Despite the acknowledged value of placement the number of students undertaking placement has decreased, year on year, across a number of disciplines which is challenging for Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s), (Saunders and Zuzel, 2010; Docherty, Jones and Sileryte, 2015). Various initiatives are used to enhance uptake of placement. This paper presents one such initiative involving the scaling-up of two co-curricular 5-credit point modules to Year 1 and 2 undergraduate students. Delivery of the pilot commenced in September 2017. The project is being evaluated against short, medium and long-term measures. To date, student confidence and resilience has increased for those engaged with the initiative across three time points.