If you don't mind ploughing your way through a bit of theory, there's an interesting article "The Shifting Sands of Employability" by Nick Wilton in the latest edition of CESR Review from the Centre for Employment Studies, Bristol.
Taking an etymological approach, Wilton looks at the use of the term 'employability' from the 1940's to the present day. Early definitions focus on assessing people's ability to work in the light of characteristics like age, family backgound, ability or medical condition.
Following many variations the term has, since 2006, focussed on graduate employability - in particular, the supposed responsibility of graduates to acquire a set of key skills that will meet the demands of the labour market.
Wilton's argument is that this emphasis on 'tooling up' graduates for employment overlooks the fact that the graduate labour market has not kept up with the rise in graduate numbers. Social and education characteristics (e.g. type of University attended, gender, ethnicity) may be more likely to account for difficulties in finding graduate employment rather than the acquisition of employability skills.
To quote: "As such, in its current guise, employability is associated with the attribution of fault rather than seeking remedy for unemployment and effectively disregards structural explanations for unemployment or underemployment such as geographical immobility, the collective experience of labour market inequality and the recruitment behaviours of organisations"
Heady words indeed, but is it all true?
It is certainly true that come organisations concentrate their recruitment efforts on a limited number of prestige universities, which, combined with academic stipulations often based on UCAS points ensure that they are far more likely to recruit candidates who are from priveleged backgrounds. Unpaid internships and high costs of study are making some career routes virtually inaccessible for those who are not.
On the other hand there are some companies with active diversity policies who go out of their way to encourage applications from under-represented groups, just as there are some individuals who are so determined to succeed and have so much belief in their own success (the 'locus of control' theory) that they succeed against all the odds.
Are employability skills a useful addition to the graduate skillset - or just a cover up for the lack of decent jobs? What do you think?
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