How is COVID-19 affecting graduate employability?
Employers are being asked to respond to a survey on employment and graduate employability in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic and lockdowns have affected different industries in different ways. What does this mean for new graduates entering the post-pandemic workplace?
For businesses to thrive in the contemporary marketplace, ‘You have to value skills and not just degrees,’ argued Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM, at the Davos 2020 World Economic Summit. That’s why a new survey is being launched to discover employers’ and managers’ views on the importance of social and emotional skills for current graduates.
Run by researchers from the Centre for Psychology, Education and Emotional Intelligence (PEEI) at the Technological University Dublin, the survey will gather data on how diverse organisations have coped with the fallout of the pandemic and its effects on employees old and young. It will ask how employers view socio-emotional skills for work and graduate employability in the future. It will also ask how recruitment and training for new graduates might change due to their experiences of working during in the pandemic.
The research is being led by Dr Aiden Carthy and Dr Miriam O’Regan at TU Dublin as part of the Transform-EDU project, funded by the Higher Education Authority of Ireland and managed by Dr Philip Owende. Aiden says: ‘Much has been learned about the impact of training in socio-emotional skills on graduates’ readiness for work. This is a unique opportunity to take part in a survey that will help shape tailored training in emotional skills for different industries to prepare graduates for the 21st-century workplace.’
The survey can be accessed here. It should take 10-15 minutes to complete. For further information on this research, contact miriam.oregan@tudublin.ie.
