The role of Universities' Career Services in improving the “skills match” between new graduates and employers: an international benchmarking.

Abstract

The opening argument of this thesis is that the new corporate trends and imperatives are shaping the skills that managers and employees need in order to allow companies to stay competitive in the current world. This new set of skills mainly refers to the “soft skills”; differently from technical skills which are job-specific, soft skills include personal and interpersonal abilities that are transferable across different types of job, enhancing the employability of individuals and, consequently, their chance to gain employment and to succeed in the job career. In particular employers from all over the world are seeking talented new graduates equipped with this new set of skills but, at the same time, they think that today’s graduates are not ready for the world of work, and they are complaining about a “soft skills gap” in this population. The presence of this gap between employers skills requirements and the skills owned by new graduates is the main issue tackled by this thesis. There are three main participants contributing to the development of graduates’ employability or “work readiness”, including soft skills: the graduate him or herself, the university and the employer. However, universities are the primary responsible in the development of employability in their students, that means preparing them for the world of work and helping them with the transition into the labor market; in particular universities' career services have a predominant role in this field. Career services all over the world have been established with the primary purpose of directly connecting students and graduates with employers increasing their chance for employment, and in order to give incentives for reinventing the academic curriculum according to the professionalism and skills’ requirements of the corporate world, leading in turn to enhanced graduates’ employability and thus to an easier transition into the labor market. Moreover, from the employers' perspective, universities' career services represent the main channel through which obtaining a good match between their requirements and graduates’ profiles. In the current years, higher education’s career services have to acknowledge the changing nature of their role, given the current trends in the labor market, and adopt innovative ways for improving graduates’ employability and, consequently, employment. This work is principally aimed at providing interesting insights to the Cà Foscari Career Service in order to reinvent its practices for improving graduates' employability and soft skills and consequently the match between employers requirements and Cà Foscari graduates’ profiles, overcoming the skills gap perception. At this purpose, the main tools used in this thesis are a survey provided to employers connected with the Cà Foscari Career Service in order to gain useful suggestions from the corporate world, and an international research conducted among the best universities' career services all over the world, in particular in the US and in the UK, according to some international rankings, in order to take the cue from their activities and services offered.