Search

The article reports a year-long study to systematically understand ‘employability’ as a social psychological construct and its linkages with various person centred attributes and choice of career tracks. To that end, the article is divided into three sections. The first section analyses the Indian context of the demographic dividend and higher education and locates the construction of employability within it. The second section reports the rationale, the method and the results. Finally, the article concludes with the discussion of results and implications. Employability has a duality associated with it. It is a construct that, on one hand, is sensitive to macro variables like the state of the economy, the access to education and finance and sector-wise trends. On the other hand, employability may also be related to the person-centred variables like effectiveness and hope. The recruitment process can be seen as a site of this interaction between structural trends and agentic competencies. Through understanding the duality of structure and agency can we centre the debate on employability, skewed away from economic and sociological factors to psychological ones. This article is an attempt in that direction. In the present study, based on preliminary field research, six career tracks were identified. 643 students from final/pre-final semesters in colleges and employed cohort from Thanjavur and Chennai in Tamil Nadu, were administered psychological instruments regarding personal effectiveness and attribution to success and failure. Additionally, students were tested before and after the placement season to cross-validate whether they got employed or not. The model was tested using binomial logistic regression analysis. Results indicate that the employed cohort both as students and recently employed displayed significantly different internal and external attribution to success and failure and personal effectiveness than the non-employed cohort. Implications, limitations and future research questions are discussed.

This paper examines employability in the context of conceptual and political issues surrounding it. Drawing on self determination theory (SDT), we conceptualize that self and understanding of what the self intrinsically values may have a significant impact on securing employment and sustaining it. This can be best captured through both linguistic forms of self expression like words and languages as well as non linguistic forms like images. Both narratives and images transcend the constraints imposed by discursive practices in alien languages (English, other Indian Languages). However, images and descriptions of self-images give more information teleologically. Since the idea of possibility is inherent in the concept of �employ-ability� images and projection of possible selves is immediate through images. While research has looked at possible selves in the lives of youth, they have not done using images as a tool. In this exploratory study, four colleges were purposively chosen and depending on the feasibility, students selected themselves. To arrest the triggering of stereotypes, the workshop mode was used and the students were given sufficient time to work through a simple task. One hundred forty-three students studying in 2nd and 3rd year of city arts and science colleges were given the task to identify 3 pictures/images that best represent their self. For cross-validation, they were also asked to write a few lines to explain why/in what personal manner, the image represents the word. The words that emerged from the students as descriptions of the images represented the core values of the student/s. The images and the explanations were content analyzed. The themes that emerge are described. The effect of gender is not controlled as this is an exploratory study. We feel that the effect of culture are accentuated in this study and therefore need not be controlled. Although a cross cultural comparison was not done, it certainly could be taken as further area of research. The paper describes the themes and proposes that certain themes may be useful in understanding employability. The limitation of the study and the implications are discussed. � 2015, National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India.