1. Introduction
One of the key concerns of higher education institutions (HEIs) is the professional standing of their graduates [
1]. Continuous scrutiny has been placed on the design and workings of mechanisms that transition students from HEI campuses to contemporary workplaces. Public expectations essentially spur the creativity and ability of HEIs to demonstrate their obligation to grow, nurture, and unleash talents for economic and human development. As the monetary value of time dictates market demands, its rapid evolution impacts the talent market [
2]. Therefore, HEIs need to know the required social talents and capacities expected to be shown by undergraduates to develop these talents at par with public expectations. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the systems that assess undergraduate employability.
Pauceanu et al. [
3] defined employability as one’s sustained mobility within the job market to achieve their full potential. An individual’s employability depends on key assets, namely, knowledge, skill sets, and attitudes, which must be presented when seeking potential employers, and in the contexts of personal events and job market conditions [
4]. To our knowledge, several studies have attempted to develop models (e.g., the USEM and DOTS model) to enhance graduate employability [
5,
6]. Among these models, the CareerEDGE model, introduced by Pool and Sewell [
6], has been widely employed as a general model for studying factors that influence the development of graduate employability. In their CareerEDGE model, Pool and Sewell [
6] recognized five main dimensions of employability: (1) career development learning; (2) work and life experience; (3) degree subject knowledge, skills, and understanding; (4) generic skills; and (5) emotional intelligence.
Career practitioners believe CareerEDGE has practical application in designing career interventions because the model focuses on individual factors. Edwards et al. [
7] suggested that career interventions impact individual factors—they can go as far as assisting an individual’s reflection on past experiences and not make any impact at the local or national labor market levels. Herein, our focus is on self-efficacy, which is a key individual factor identified by CareerEDGE. Sufficient empirical evidence has been published to suggest that the self-efficacy of the unemployed population positively relates to job search behavior, employment outcomes [
8,
9], and students’ future employment outcomes [
10]. Furthermore, prior studies have shown that self-efficacy can act as a potential mediator in the context of employability, e.g., [
11].
Heretofore, concrete empirical research in undergraduate employability remains insufficient. Also, there is a growing demand for more investigation into the association of CareerEDGE with undergraduate employability [
12]. In response, in this study, we examined the said relationship using an undergraduate sample in the North-East region of Nigeria. Additionally, we sought to provide a more comprehensive view of undergraduate employability by studying the constructs of the CareerEDGE. The primary premise of CareerEDGE is that it will result in positive employability interventions [
13]. Having said that, most studies conducted qualitative reviews and model validation, which typically suffer from a lack of generalizability, instead of investigating the effect on undergraduate employability, e.g., [
14]. It is not surprising that the extrapolation and comparison of findings remains challenging. With this study, we aim to contribute to the employability literature by providing a relationship analysis between CareerEDGE and undergraduate employability, as well as the mediating effect of self-efficacy. Hence, we pursued a dual-purpose study. First, we determined the effect of five CareerEDGE dimensions on undergraduate employability from the six universities in the North-East region of Nigeria. Second, we explored whether self-efficacy mediates the association between the five dimensions of CareerEDGE and the employability of the undergraduates.
6. Discussion and Implications
This paper presents an overview of the current literature and practical knowledge on employability that can be implemented in HEIs to improve undergraduates’ employment prospects and employability. However, despite the wealth of information and models that provide insight into undergraduate employability, there has been little empirical research in this area. Furthermore, the majority of employability studies have been carried out in other demographic regions around the world, which may not be reflective of the Nigerian environment. This study delved into the factors that influence undergraduate employability in Nigeria, with a special emphasis on undergraduates in the North-East region. This study was guided by the Career EDGE employability model, which provided empirical evidence on individual graduate employability factors (i.e., career development learning, work experience, degree subject knowledge, skills, and understanding, generic skills, and emotional intelligence). Besides, we believe that CareerEDGE provides a complete and comprehensive model for analyzing employability of undergraduates, as stated by Baruch et al. [
76]; the field of career development suffers from multiple concepts and fragmentation that frequently cause confusion rather than clarity [
76].
This paper also provides an account of the cumulative knowledge of how the impact of the predictors on undergraduate employability was explained by the mediating role of self-efficacy.
To evaluate the hypotheses, the PLS-SEM was used. Career development learning, work experience, degree subject knowledge, skills, understanding, generic skills, and emotional intelligence were found to represent 57.2% and 84.7% of the variance in self-efficacy and employability, respectively. Career development learning is the first individual factor that was assumed to be a positive predictor of employability. The results confirmed this hypothesis. This finding is congruent with other studies by Watts [
37] and Salape and Cuevas [
38], who found career development learning a strategy to improve students’ employability. In other words, career development learning is providing students with the opportunities to build their employability. As a result, providing a varied range of professional experiences is critical in encouraging students to engage in work-related learning. Access to career development and work-related learning should be made easier with the use of learning tools and resources.
Similar to Pool and Sewell’s [
6] study, degree subject knowledge and skill had a significant impact on employability. The findings, along with those of Cranmer’s [
48] study, imply that academics are equally devoted to improving their graduates’ employability through subject knowledge instead of the development of job-related skills. These results confirmed that graduates who secure employment in professions that make good use of the skills and information acquired during their university studies are often successful in the graduate labor market. Furthermore, this study revealed that working experience was a significant predictor of the employability, which is consistent with the previous research of O’Leary [
77]. Though the experiences of the graduates in this study were found to vary, they all indicated a significant need for employability-related support to be included in undergraduate degree programs. The findings were in agreement with the findings of Stiwne and Jungert [
78], who discovered that the most beneficial learning experience was a thesis project in a company, which is an example of a well-managed approach to employability support.
Given these results, it would seem logical for universities to shift some of their resources away from classroom-based initiatives, aimed at developing employability skills, and toward increasing employment-based training and experience, as well as employer involvement in courses, which were found to positively affect immediate graduate prospects in the labor market and, thus, support graduates in the transition from HE to work.
Furthermore, this study found that generic skills were a strong predictor of employability, which is consistent with previous studies [
77,
79]. Other studies have demonstrated that to gain generic skills, students must constantly practice communicating with others and participating in group activities [
80]. It means that incorporating soft skills into HEIs [
81] will allow graduates to acquire specialized labor-market abilities [
82]. According to human capital theory, there is a need to strengthen the connection between soft skill development, competencies, and content learning to ensure that graduates create the knowledge and skills required to pursue education for social development and cognitive processes [
83,
84]. This is a significant element, given the need for HEIs to transform and develop the younger generation by reorienting education programs [
79].
The findings also show that emotional intelligence is emerging as a useful and promising individual difference in predicting employability. This finding is consistent with prior studies by Coetzee and Beukes [
85], Pool [
86], and Udayar et al. [
87]. According to the findings, higher levels of emotional intelligence (specifically the ability to manage one’s own emotions) are associated with more confidence in exhibiting employability behaviors. These findings substantiate Salovey and Mayer’s [
88] notion that emotions aid in the creation of multiple future plans, the improvement of decision-making processes, the facilitation of creative thinking, and the improvement of persistence in challenging tasks. The findings also imply that those who reported a stronger ability to self-regulate their emotions are more likely to be satisfied with the help they received in preparing for their careers. Brown et al. [
89] discovered that increased ability to perceive emotions, use emotions to aid in thought, understand emotions, and regulate emotions in oneself and others is associated with emotional and intellectual growth. As a result, career preparation assistance programs should include emotional intelligence as a major component of the curriculum.
Finally, the analysis also revealed that self-efficacy mediated the effects of career development learning, subject degree knowledge, and emotional intelligence on employability. The results of this study support previous research that shows positive relationships between career development learning, subject degree knowledge, emotional intelligence, and employability, with self-efficacy as a mediator [
60,
63,
90]. This finding also confirmed that self-efficacy influences career development learning, subject degree knowledge, and emotional intelligence, all of which are essential for the employability of undergraduates. In addition, it is critical to underline the importance of parents in developing undergraduate employability and self-efficacy. Current research reveals that self-efficacy is the main mediator of employability perceived by undergraduates. Parents need to provide youth with adequate support and resources at this stage to develop their self-efficacy and ensure their employability in the future. As a result, this study makes important recommendations on how to build sustained HEIs and labor market partnerships to foster the employability of HE undergraduates by implementing the CareerEDGE constructs in all HEIs in the North-East region of Nigeria.
7. Conclusions and Future Research Directions
In conclusion, the CareerEDGE employability model is an effective model that can be employed to investigate the factors influencing undergraduate employability in six universities in North-East Nigeria. The results contribute to the employability and career transitions literature by adding to the empirical evidence for the capacity of the CareerEDGE constructs (i.e., work experience skills; career development learning; degree subject knowledge and understanding; generic skills; and emotional intelligence) in predicting undergraduate employability. The results also indicate that self-efficacy mediates the relationship between career development learning, degree subject knowledge and skills, emotional intelligence and employability. It is anticipated that career practitioners will use these constructs to improve undergraduates’ future employability in dealing with employment challenges in Nigeria’s North-East area.
There are five limitations to this study that should be considered in future research. Since we only focus on the CareerEDGE model, there is a high risk of inference in this study. Future studies might compare other models’ explanatory ability of understanding undergraduate employability. Second, two variables found in CareerEDGE (self-confidence and self-esteem) were not included in this study. As a result, future research should include these two variables in its findings. Self-reported data collection and the use of a cross-sectional method are two other limitations of the current study. Future research should use the longitudinal technique, in addition to other data-gathering methods, such as interviews and observation. In addition, this study acknowledges that non-measurable factors, also known as soft indicators, are one of the most important resources for determining undergraduate employability. However, this study did not take into account soft indicators such as students’ ambitions, their expectations, workplace values and others. Thus, further research needs to investigate how those soft indicators affect undergraduate employment.