First year students' imagination of future employment: identity as an important employability aspect

One of the main goals of Higher Education is to make students employable. Employability is known as skills, knowledge, and personal attributes a person should possess to become employed. In this article, we use the processual perspective on employability, which emphasizes identity formation. We argue that employability includes the student's ability to imagine their future work and employment possibilities and see themselves as part of a computer science profession. We use sociocultural theory as an analytical framework and have found the concept of imagination to be fruitful in shedding light on how first-year students imagine their future job. Through eight qualitative interviews with first-year cybersecurity students, we found that students had difficulties imagining their future dream job. We find that the students had not developed a computer science identity, even though the study program has some focus on identity formation through teaching discipline relevant courses from the first semester. In addition, companies visit the school and present their interests, and finally, some of the courses offer real-world scenarios for the students to engage in. The study implies that it is important that the study program pays particular attention to identity formation for the students and that enough time is spent on giving the students information about future employment possibilities.