Internship and employability prospects: assessing student’s work readiness

Abstract

Purpose Changes in the workplace have raised serious concerns about the future of work and the effectiveness of undergraduate academic programs to sufficiently prepare students for business. The purpose of this paper is to address this concern by exploring how internship employment (placement) is implicated in the young business graduates’ employability prospects. Design/methodology/approach This research explored the students’ perceptions regarding their degree of “work readiness” after completing an internship program. The concept of “work readiness” is conceptualized in terms of role clarity, ability and motivation. An institution of higher education in Greece provided the sampling frame for this research. Online survey data have been used. Findings Students who attend internship programs assessed positively all aspects of the work readiness construct. They knew what it was expected by employers from them to do at work. They were able to effectively apply basic academic skills, high-order skills and professional skills required by employers on the job and placed greater importance to the intrinsic rewards than the extrinsic ones. Research limitations/implications This is an exploratory study and is designed as a foundation for future empirical studies. Further research could examine the dimensions of the work readiness concept in other geographic contexts and validate the scale measurement with larger samples. Originality/value The integration of scattered pieces of literature on graduates’ employability through the lenses of “work readiness” is a novel theoretical approach to explore the effectiveness of internship programs on employability prospects in the Greek context.