Abstract:

The aim of the work is to study employability expectations in an understudied age group: high school adult students, during their last year of attendance to both state, and private high schools in a metropolitan area in Italy.

Via school administration, a short (10 closed-ended questions and one open-ended answer) anonymous survey was submitted directly to the target. In addition to some demographic data (age, gender, and curricula), students were asked to specify their intentions for the future after diploma, and to describe their ideal work environment in their own words; they had also to evaluate a set of skills from two different point of view: the perceived utility of such skills for finding a job, and the confidence in the preparation offered by the school in enhancing such competences. Finally, they were required to evaluate the attractiveness of a small number of technologies, and services in the chosen tertiary education paths.

A total of 1453 responses were collected from students in the area, between 13 November 2023 and 5 December 2023.

Data analysis, performed with quantitative methods, allowed to acquire relevant suggestions about ideal workspace and atmosphere, individual preferences regarding ideal working style and conditions (such as company culture, context, involvement, treatment, workplace), ideal professional sector (coded with Italian standard ATECO), ideal role.

Two indices have then been constructed: Overall index of perceived usefulness (of the skills presented) in the labour market and Overall index of confidence in the preparation offered by the school. These couple of values, related to each answer, were then used for a representation in a matrix of Employability, inspired by Gartner's magic quadrants. We also considered the role of different pre-work experience of the students, in relation to their respective curricula, as stated by the Italian law about PCTO (Percorsi per le Competenze Trasversali e l’Orientamento, Pathways for Transversal Skills and Orientation).

Evidences from this study could be useful on two fronts. On a descriptive level, to explore how this generation sees its role in the future; on a methodological level, it is a first attempt to define an Employability index that is suitable for the specific characteristics of such profile and that takes into account the evolution of skills.
Di Fabio, Annamaria, e Ornella Bucci. «Self-Perceived Employability Scale for students: contributo alla validazione italiana con studenti di scuola secondaria di secondo grado.» Counseling 8 (2015).

References:
[1] Rothwell, Andrew, e John Arnold. «Self‐perceived employability: development and validation of a scale» Personnel Review 36, n. 1 (2007): 23-41.
[2] Rothwell, Andrew, Ian Herbert, e Frances Rothwell. «Self-perceived employability: Construction and initial validation of a scale for university students» Journal of Vocational Behavior 73, n. 1 (2008): 1-12.

Keywords:

Education, employability, skills, secondary school, orientation, self-perception.