Understanding planning students’ self-perceived employability in an uncertain future
Planning students are entering an increasingly competitive professional labour market. To understand their selfperceived employability and identify the employability-enhancing strategies they engage in to improve their graduate employment prospects, this paper analyses survey data collected...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Institute of Architecture, Urban & Spatial Planning of Serbia
2021-01-01
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| Series: | Spatium |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/1450-569X/2021/1450-569X2146011G.pdf |
| Summary: | Planning students are entering an increasingly competitive professional
labour market. To understand their selfperceived employability and identify
the employability-enhancing strategies they engage in to improve their
graduate employment prospects, this paper analyses survey data collected
from 106 undergraduate students at a large Australian university. Three key
themes are identified as important for graduate employability from the
perspective of planning students: education; personal attributes and assets;
and appropriate professional experience. This study finds that many
respondents were critical of the extent to which they believed their
university studies were positively positioned for the real world of planning
and positively positioned them to succeed in the graduate employment market
relative to other planning graduates. To address these limitations,
respondents emphasised the importance of developing personal and
professional networks with peers and engaging in skills-enhancing
activities, and revealed an expectation that they may need to engage in
unpaid professional work experience. However, notwithstanding these efforts
to actively moderate the impact of self-perceived personal skills and
experiential deficits on their employability, there was a nascent
acknowledgement that despite investing significant effort into developing
networks, getting professional experience, and modelling appropriate
attitudes and professional traits, they may become highly employable yet
still fail to secure graduate employment as a planner due to structural
constraints beyond their control. |
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| ISSN: | 1450-569X 2217-8066 |