Youth employability training: two experiments

Advancing employability: applying training evaluation to employability development programs

Purpose

This paper aims to apply training evaluation to employability development, providing a systematic process to assess employability development programs' effectiveness under the framework of employability capital resources (Peeters et al., 2019).

Design/methodology/approach

The authors demonstrate the training evaluation process within an employability development program for US secondary school students. This process included providing validation evidence for measures of evaluation criteria across multiple samples of secondary school students and testing the effectiveness of the program utilizing a quasi-experimental design.

Findings

The authors systematically found support for the intervention's effects on training criteria (i.e. reactions, learning, behavior, results) and demonstrated the utility for training evaluation's application to employability development. The findings illustrate how a training evaluation approach can provide holistic evidence that an employability development program achieved its intended outcomes.

Originality/value

Employability is a new and burgeoning topic – however, employability development varies in how it is conceptualized, evaluated and assessed. By applying training evaluation approaches, employability development can be assessed within a unifying framework and better integrated within the Human Resource Management literature.

The relationship between emotion regulation strategies and job search behavior among fourth-year university students

The job search process is a stressful experience. This study investigated the effect of emotion regulation strategies on job search behavior in combination with anxiety and job search self-efficacy among Chinese university fourth-year students (N = 816, mean age = 21.98, 31.5% male, 34.9% majored in science, 18.0% from "211 Project" universities). Results showed that cognitive reappraisal was positively related to job search behavior, while expressive suppression was negatively related to job search behavior. Additionally, anxiety was negatively related to job search behavior, while job search self-efficacy was positively associated with job search behavior. Moreover, both anxiety and job search self-efficacy mediated the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and job search behavior. In general, emotion regulation strategies played an important role in job search behavior. Implications include the notion that emotion regulation interventions may be helpful to increase job search behavior among university students.