Use Them or Lose Them: a study of the employability of sport graduates through their transition into the sport workplace

Abstract

Over a number of years there have been concerns regarding the employability of UK sport graduates within the sport industry. Research and policy on employability have focused on employability as an individual construct, identifying the attributes graduates’ need to develop in order to be employable. This paper questions these approaches and explores employability through the sport graduate’s transition into the workplace. In order to examine the graduate in situ within the workplace, case studies were undertaken of four sport science graduates. These were constructed using interviews with the graduates and significant others within their organisation. The key findings suggest that employability is a complex phenomenon that is a synthesis of the interaction between the graduate, their employer and their job. From the findings an Interaction Theory and Model of Graduate Employability in Sport has been developed and the implications for the employability of sport graduates are identified.

Keywords: graduates, employability, attributes, employers, sport industry, organisational commitment.