Propiedad de los periódicos: La familia Chamorro

The career management process approach promotes pro-active career planning in a logical and rational manner and links the planning process to future employment outcomes. Such rational career planning does not account for graduates who are continuously confronted with economic, political and social challenges. Career planning and career building for students from unstable socio-economic and political environments are often linked to the survival needs of their families and/or availability of educational and financial opportunities. The link between pro-active career planning and future employment outcomes for such students are thus not as straightforward as suggested by research and the career management approach. In addition, the agentic focus of the approach suggests that the graduate’s employability depends solely on his/her good or bad decisions in terms of career planning. Such a perspective places the responsibility of career success squarely on the shoulders of the individual and does not consider systemic or structural factors.

Despite the mentioned shortcomings, for this study the career management approach proved a useful lens for the analysis of graduate career paths, as it revealed possibilities for interventions by HEIs as well as how graduates can improve their own employability. A process view to graduate employability takes into account how graduates manage the transition into employment, and focuses on the interactional nature of educational and employment trajectories (Okay-Somerville and Scholarios 2015). This interaction provides scope for HEIs to support students to integrate into their education a focus on possible future careers, and in this manner ameliorate the effect of being unable to engage in pro-active career planning, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

In addition, the career management approach provides a practical way to explain the concept of employability to non-experts such as students and parents. In a very practical way the importance of pro-active career thinking is thus emphasised. The advantage of this approach primarily lies in the applied relevance for a variety of stakeholders (policy makers, employers, students and parents) (Okay-Somerville and Scholarios 2015).

4.6 Methodology

4.6.1 Context and research approach

This study forms part of a larger research project which investigated the transition of 46 graduates from HE into first-time employment. Of the 46 graduates 31 were first- generations students (FGSs), in other words, students of whom none of the parents had completed tertiary education. The specification of FGSs is significant in the South African context where, due to the apartheid history, it can be assumed that the majority of students currently in the HE system are FGSs.

The graduates all graduated in 2010 with a diploma, an undergraduate or a postgraduate qualification from four universities1 _{in SA, and entered the job market}

thereafter. The participants were purposively selected as first-time entrants to the labour market, and to include graduates from various faculties and qualification levels in order to gain an overview of a variety of graduates’ transitions into first-time employment. The participants in the study were selected on the basis of their previous participation in a graduate destination survey (GDS) by a regional higher education consortium.2

The focus of this study is to explore the career management processes of the graduates during the first five years of their careers, and we did this by gathering qualitative data and employing an interpretive approach. Semi-structured individual interviews provided opportunities for the participants to express themselves and to relay experiences and events that shaped their careers, wheras the interpretive approach allowed us to describe, understand and interpret the management of the participants’ career paths (Babbie and Mouton 2011).

4.6.2 Data collection and analysis

Interviews were used as an opportunity to explore how the graduates understood success and managed their careers towards the attainment thereof. As part of the semi-structured interviews conducted for the larger study, the graduates were asked how they understood success in the workplace as well as how their degree studies fed back into their jobs. Probes were used to encourage the participants to elaborate on their perspectives on success and on whether they considered themselves to be

successful in their careers. They were also encouraged to expand on the value of HE with regard to their careers. We asked them to suggest improvements or changes to the HE system that could have amplified the contribution of HE to their career paths.

The 46 interview transcripts were subjected to thematic content analysis, drawing on a set of codes that were developed during the larger study that explored the transition of graduates from HE into first-time employment. The credibility of the data analysis was supported by the development of the codes by both of us separately. The codes were revised in the light of the data (Leibowitz et al. 2012) and our theoretical approach to graduate employability from a career management perspective. The codes, used as subheadings for the findings in the next section, are: 1) career exploration, 2) career goals, 3) career strategies, 4) career appraisal and 5) career success. Interpretation and representation of data were enhanced though repeated readings of transcripts as well as several rounds of analysis.