Personal Employability and employment outcomes in a university sample: a study before and after COVID-19

Abstract

Labour market uncertainty makes difficult to get (and keep) a high-quality job even for graduate students. Moreover, this situation has been worsened due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this study is to test the influence that personal employability has on maintaining (or being able to find a new) high-quality job in a sample of young university graduates that faced the job market crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus on the four personal employability dimensions of Fugate et al.’s (2004) model: career identity, personal adaptability, human capital, and social capital. Our hypotheses state that the four dimensions of employability are positively related with employment status and with job quality indicators (salary, horizontal fit, job satisfaction). The results obtained in a sample of 136 university graduates show that social capital contributes to being employed after several months of job market uncertainty caused by COVID-19. Moreover, career identity positively predicts horizontal fit and job satisfaction. The study shows the importance of social capital and career identity under uncertain job market situations to foster positive employment outcomes.