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The present study proposes coaching as a pedagogical intervention to prepare students for transitioning to the labour market. Taking a competence-based approach, the proposed coaching practice aims to enhance students' employability competences to facilitate a smoother school-to-work transition. However, what transition coaching looks like remains largely unclear. Moreover, in competence-based education, teachers are expected to be highly skilled coaches, facilitating students' transition to the labour market. The present study aims to map the core competencies of a transition coach.

A qualitative design was adopted to map the core competences of a transition coach. Data were collected from two focus groups, consisting of coaches in higher education and in the workplace.

Results show that, to create the necessary support conditions, a coach creates a safe coaching environment and supports students in setting goals, guide them in the activities they undertake to attain these goals, and asks reflective questions. Moreover, the coach stimulates students' ownership by putting the student in the centre of the decision-making process. Furthermore, the results emphasize the importance of the coach's professional attitude and knowledge about the transition process and the labour market.

The article concludes with practical implications for novice transition coaches and teachers in higher education.

The present study adds to the agenda of graduate work readiness by proposing a coaching practice aimed at preparing students for their transition to the labour market.

To keep up with their changing environment, organizations are investing in continuous skills development of their employees and therefore implement personal development plans (PDPs). However, to be effective, PDPs require employees to show self-direction in learning (SDL). Autonomy-supportive supervisors can foster employees’ SDL. Therefore, the purpose of this cross-sectional study is two-fold. First, this study explores the relationship between perceived autonomy support and learning at the workplace. Second, this study investigates the mediating role of SDL when using a PDP.

Based on data from a convenience sample from employees in various industries (n = 193), structural equation modelling was used to investigate the relationships between the different variables.

First, a positive relationship was found between perceived autonomy support and informal learning activities, but not with formal learning activities. Second, results indicated that SDL when using a PDP mediates the relation between perceived autonomy support and both formal and informal learning activities at the workplace. These results suggest that a supervisor who is perceived as autonomy supportive can foster employees’ SDL when using a PDP and, in turn, support learning at the workplace.

Also, these findings indicate that autonomy-supportive supervisors can encourage the undertaking of learning activities by stimulating SDL when using a PDP.

For a PDP to be effective, a degree of SDL is assumed. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate SDL within a PDP setting.

In a fast evolving labour market, higher education graduates need to develop employability competences. Key in becoming employable is the ability to reflect on learning experiences, both within a curriculum as well as extra-curricular and work placements. This paper wants to conceptualise how an online learning platform might entail a reflective practice that systematically supports students in reflecting on their learning experiences.

When studying online learning platforms for developing students' employability competences, it became clear that the effectiveness of the platform depends on how the platform guides students' reflective practice. In turn, the authors studied which features (tools, services and resources) of the online learning platform are guiding the reflective practice.

This resulted in the introduction of an online learning platform, containing a comprehensive set of online learning tools and services, which supports students' reflective practice and, in turn, their employability competences. The online platform facilitates both feedback from curricular and work-related learning experiences and can be used as a start by students for showcasing their employability competences. The reflective practice consists of a recurrent, systematic process of reflection, containing various phases: become aware, analyse current state, draft and plan a solution, take action and, finally, reflect in and on action.

Future research revolves around studying the features of online learning platforms and their role in fostering students' reflection and employability competences.

The conceptual model provides concrete indicators on how to implement online learning platforms for supporting students' reflection and employability competences.

This is the first article that analyses an online learning platform that guides students' reflective practice and fosters their employability competences. The authors provide concrete suggestions on how to model the online platform, building further on reflective practice theory.

Given the dynamic and fast-evolving labour market, developing students’ employability competences has become of utmost importance for higher education institutions. The ability to reflect is essential to develop these competences, as it helps students to identify their learning needs and make plans for further development. However, reflective abilities are not easy to acquire and students need guidance to help them reflect. Therefore, mentoring is often used as an instructional approach to stimulate students to reflect. Empirical evidence on the relation between mentoring and employability competences is scarce, and the mediating role of reflection especially has rarely been researched. Consequently, the present study aims to investigate this mediating relationship, employing a pre-test post-test design.

Questionnaire data were collected from students before and after participation in four similar 1-year mentoring programmes in higher education within the Netherlands and Belgium (n = 160).

The path analysis demonstrated that, first, trust and availability, autonomy support and empathy were significantly related to students’ employability competences. Secondly, autonomy support and similarity were significantly related to students’ critical reflection. Thirdly, critical reflection was significantly related to students’ employability competences. Last, reflection partially mediated the relationship between mentoring (autonomy support and similarity) and employability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to demonstrate that mentoring programmes in higher education enable students to reflect and, in turn, develop their employability competences. Furthermore, it provides mentoring programme directors and mentors with concrete guidelines for developing students’ reflection and employability competences.

Recent graduates are an important source of talent among hired employees as they bring up-to-date knowledge into the organisation. Yet, organisations have difficulties retaining them and recognizing factors influencing their voluntary turnover, which may differ from those influencing voluntary turnover among tenured employees. For example, graduate employees need to adjust to a completely new context and develop their identity as professionals. Therefore, the current study presents a review of the factors influencing newcomers’ voluntary turnover and turnover intentions.

To explore the factors influencing the turnover intentions and behaviour of recently hired employees, we conducted a literature review of 57 articles from several databases for different disciplines.

Our review identifies factors that influence turnover intentions and behaviour among recently hired employees and presents them in a model. The model identifies five categories of factors influencing turnover intentions and behaviour: pre-joining expectations, person-environment fit, the role of the supervisor, human resource (HR) practices and person-related factors.

The model enhances the understanding of why new employees leave an organisation and shows how supervisors and HR practices play an important role in reducing voluntary turnover among newly hired employees. The article concludes with practical suggestions on how to retain these employees.

While employee turnover has been studied extensively, this review focuses specifically on factors that influence the turnover intentions and behaviour of newcomers. We present these factors in a model that can be used to inform managerial practices to reduce turnover among newcomers.

Employers increasingly require students to possess competences that go beyond theoretical knowledge and academic expertise, such as lifelong learning skills. To equip students with these competences, higher education institutes have introduced coaching as part of their teaching programs. The present study qualitatively evaluates a career coaching practice in higher education.

We conducted semi-structured interviews with graduates who had participated in career coaching activities at a Dutch university (N = 12). The interviews were conducted between February and May 2022. Atlas.ti version 9 was used to analyse the interviews.

Results revealed that graduates believed that career coaching helped them to adjust to the workplace. They indicated that the coaching practice helped them to acquire reflection skills, which was considered the main mechanism for adjustment to the workplace.

These results add to the transition-related literature by identifying one way that graduates successfully adjust to the workplace.

The results also provide insight into how higher education can best prepare students for their transition to the workplace.

As the education-to-work transition does not end upon graduation, this research focusses on graduate employees’ work adjustment as an important phase in the transition process.

This paper aims to measure the extent to which students possess the necessary competences of an employable graduate, the authors explored the development and validation of a questionnaire that measures employability competences of students in higher education through combining insights from higher education and workplace learning literature.

The paper aims to develop and validate the questionnaire a systematic literature review and factor analyses were conducted. The authors applied the questionnaire to two different groups of students. First, to undergraduate students in an applied sciences program in Belgium (N = 935). The dataset was randomly divided into two subsets to conduct an exploratory and a confirmatory factor analysis. Next, another confirmatory factor analysis was done to cross-validate the factor structure found. For this, the questionnaire was offered to a group of undergraduate and graduate students at a university in The Netherlands (N = 995).

The results support a model of employability based on combined insights from higher education and workplace learning literature. The model consists of the following seven factors: social competences, e-literacy, efficacy beliefs, flexibility, healthy work–life balance, lifelong learning and oral and written communication.

The questionnaire can be utilized to screen students' employability profiles and examine the relationship between teaching practices and students’ employability competences.

This study examines whether learning climate relates to employability competences through social informal learning (i.e. feedback, help and information seeking).

Multiple regression analyses and structural equation modeling were used to test direct and indirect effects in a sample of 372 employees working in two Dutch governmental institutes.

The analyses confirmed that learning climate has an indirect effect on employability competences through feedback, help and information seeking. More specifically, the findings suggest that learning climate is important for employees' engagement in proactive social informal learning activities. Engaging in these learning activities, in turn, relates to a higher level of employability.

This study employs an integrative approach to understanding employability by including the organization's learning climate and employees' social informal learning behavior. It contributes to the extant literature on professional development by unraveling how proactive social informal learning relates to employability competences. It also provides new insights on learning climate as a determinant for social informal learning and employability.

This article aims to understand conditions under which personal development plans (PDPs) can effectively be implemented for professional learning. Both the organization's manner of supporting the PDP practice as well as the individual employee's motivation is taken into account.

A questionnaire was distributed among employees of a Dutch governmental office, measuring perceived effectiveness of the tool (undertaking learning activities and performance), perceptions of PDP practices in the organization, and individual motivation. Regression analysis revealed that learning and reflection practices in the organization are positively related to number of learning activities undertaken by employees and to perceived performance.

A significant moderating effect of motivation was found, supporting the idea that the tool's perceived effectiveness depends both on the organization's efforts as well as the individual's motivation.

In this study, the authors were limited by a low response rate, a single setting, as well as a lack of causal evidence due to the cross‐sectional set‐up. They therefore encourage the validation of their hypotheses in different settings, and in an experimental/longitudinal manner.

Implications for practice include the importance for organizations to implement PDPs in an on‐going cycle of learning, combined with opportunities for formal and informal learning, while supervisors carry great responsibility for providing feedback and encouragement based on the employee's motivation for learning.

This combination of company practices with individual supporting conditions such as employees' motivation to understand when PDPs work best is a novel approach to understanding PDP effectiveness and hopes to add to both theoretical and practical understanding.

The demographic shift and the rapid rate of innovations put age and employability high on policy makers’ and human resource managers’ agenda. However, the authors do not sufficiently understand the link between these concepts. The authors set out to investigate the relationship between age and employability and aim to identify motivational mediators of this relationship. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the roles of future time perspective and goal orientation.

The authors conducted quantitative, cross-sectional survey research (n=282) in three Dutch and Austrian organizations. The authors used structural equation modeling to investigate the relationships between chronological age, future time perspective, goal orientations, and employability.

Future time perspective and goal orientation strongly relate to employability. The authors found indirect relationships between age and employability via perceived remaining opportunities.

The results question the often simplistic use of chronological age in employability and human resource management research. Therefore, the authors call for more research to investigate the relationship between age and employability more deeply.

The findings contribute new insights for the career development issues of an increasingly older workforce. This shifts the focus from age, a factor outside our control, to motivation.

This study contributes evidence for the relationships of chronological age, future time perspective, and goal orientation with employability. It extends literature by criticizing the prevalent use of chronological age and investigating mediation effects.