Abstract:

The development of students' employability for their transition to the labor market is a challenge for the Spanish university system. The National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA, 2021) points out that university graduates need to have developed a competency profile appropriate to the demands of the labor market. In this sense, the relationship with family businesses is fundamental since they are considered the main support of the world economy (Herrera and Vázquez, 2021). Most Spanish family businesses have hired non-family staff and the recruitment of this staff is a key aspect of strategic business management. On the other hand, it has been demonstrated that one of the pillars of success, especially in the globalized context, is when there is an alignment between the family organizational culture, the goals of the family business and the characteristics of the workers (whether they belong to the family or not). In this situation we speak of social capital (if the focus is on the individual) and familiness (if the focus is on the company). These cultural and recruitment demands make employability a key element for the labor, social and cultural capital of the company. With the analysis of employability, it is possible to describe the strengths and weaknesses of the individual in relation to the organizational goals of a particular family business. In this sense, the University needs to analyze whether the transversal competences enhanced in its students are in line with the human capital required by the family business; it is a gap in Spanish context. Then, the aim of this work is to assess the degree of employability of a sample of students willing to work in a family business. To assess employability, we have used the EAS35 questionnaire which evaluates employability from a bio-ecological perspective (Llinares, Zacarés & Córdoba, 2016). From this perspective, employability is the result of the reciprocal interaction between the person and his or her immediate external environment. This is particularly relevant for the family business because it analyses the individual characteristics of the future employee, his or her personal circumstances and the socio-organizational context of the family business. The participants were a total of 50 university students with a mean age of 25 (SD=7), 34 % of whom were male and 66 % female. The results obtained show that the students present adequate levels of those behaviors that are job protective behaviors for working in a family business. However, the rest of the factors of employability are lower than the population scale. It is relevant to highlight that their risk-taking behaviors and lack of self-control are very high. There is also importance for improvement in innovation behavior and in active job search behavior. The advantage of identifying which employability competences will be improving it is that we can help people to learn behavior by training programs. On the other hand, studies on employability and business are not numerous; the results obtained suggest the need to deepen this relationship since employability may play on balance between employees and competitive advantage of companies. The results are discussed in this social and organizational context of the family business where employability becomes the key to labor market insertion and in the processes of hiring workers in family businesses.

Keywords:

Employability, work, university, students, family business.