Developing and Trialing an Employability Framework for Science Graduate Employability

Graduate employability is a priority for many sectors of the community, including higher education, government, and the students themselves. However, science graduates have gaps in identifying skills gained from their undergraduate degree and what they see as important for their chosen career. Therefore, it's important that curriculum and teams supporting student learning provide explicit opportunities for students to build awareness of their learned skills relevant to employment that are developed within curricula. This study aimed to develop a science employability framework to help undergraduate science students identify and understand the skills they gained from their studies and their relevance to their future careers. Firstly, analysis was conducted to determine if employability skills are embedded into current curricula at the study site. Secondly, the currency of these skills was evaluated by a body of work to identify newly articulated skills in recent position descriptions for jobs targeted by the courses. These analyses were completed using tools developed using Natural Language Processing (NLP). The skills from these two bodies of work were then organized into a three-pillar framework (professional, knowledge, and technical skills) for common relevant positions. Using the employability framework, we made "Employability Cards" which were implemented into an interactive workshop activity designed to enhance students' awareness of job opportunities relevant to their degree. Pre- and post-workshop surveys were conducted on participating students to determine the current knowledge and perceptions on employability.