GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE Graduate Employability: Application of Logotherapy in Career Education Enhances Resilience Michaela Fengstad Faculty of Education and Social Work, Thompson Rivers University EDUC 5281: Capstone Project Dr. Alfred Schaub March 20, 2024 Author Note A capstone project submitted to Thompson Rivers University in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Education. 1 GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 2 Abstract In my past practice as a career coach and educator in a post-secondary, and as a mother of a recent graduate of a bachelor’s degree, I have become increasingly interested in the concept of career resilience and the relationship between career resilience and employability in new graduates in an ever changing and at times unfavourable labour market. Through my journey as a student in the Masters of Education program at the Thompson Rivers University I completed the Introduction to Counselling course which introduced me to logotherapy, an approach mainly known in clinical counseling, which asserts that humans are driven by a desire to find their meaning in life, and that people can tap into their spirituality to accept suffering as part of life and even turn it into accomplishments. In this paper I argue that universities are responsible for preparing students for the realities of a stressed labour market by teaching them resilience and flexibility along job searching techniques. Employability is more than academic performance and job searching techniques. My application chapter will demonstrate how a logotherapeutic approach in career education enhances students’ career resilience and teaches them how to emotionally deal with job search stress, failures, and rejections, thus increasing their employability for life. The implications are that if we want to produce graduates with high career resilience in a complex labour market, we must advocate for a new student services structure, where clinical counselors work together with career counselors to create educational programs and opportunities for students to engage in purpose and meaning searching within their own cultural set of values and expectations. Keywords: Resilience, graduate employability, logotherapy, career education, higher education GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 3 Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................................ 2 Graduate Employability: Application of Logotherapy in Career Education Enhances Student Resilience ........................................................................................................................................ 4 My experience as a career counselor and mother ........................................................................ 4 Viktor Frankl’s Existential Vacuum ............................................................................................. 6 Presenting My Argument ............................................................................................................. 7 Literature Review ............................................................................................................................ 8 Labour Market and High Education ............................................................................................ 9 Graduate Employability............................................................................................................. 10 Employer’s Feedback on Graduate Employability .................................................................... 13 Psychosocial Consequences of Unemployment ........................................................................ 15 Logotherapy, Meaning in Life, and Existential Vacuum ........................................................... 16 Resilience .................................................................................................................................. 18 Application .................................................................................................................................... 21 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 21 Issues in Career Education in Higher Education ....................................................................... 22 Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen ............................................................................................ 22 The Missed Mosaic Perspective ............................................................................................ 24 The Things You Can Find if You Don’t Stay Behind! (Dr. Seuss, 2019, 8:18) ..................... 25 Context ...................................................................................................................................... 26 The Five-Year Résumé Exercise ........................................................................................... 27 Snoopy, Where Am I Going? (SWAIG) .................................................................................... 29 Content of the exercise: ......................................................................................................... 31 SWAIG in Five Steps............................................................................................................. 31 Synopsis ..................................................................................................................................... 38 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 39 Summary.................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Implications ............................................................................................................................... 42 References ..................................................................................................................................... 44 GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 4 Graduate Employability: Application of Logotherapy in Career Education Enhances Student Resilience Recent university graduates face difficulties in securing positions aligned with their education, many being forced into underemployment (working in positions that do not require a degree). According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (2019), 41.9 % of recent graduates in their first one – four years after completing their programs were working in jobs not requiring a degree. Employers point to the gap in employability skills among post-secondary graduates as a major factor in deciding against hiring them. The CEO of Be Business Smart, Hector Quintanilla (2018), when asked on Quora “Does a college degree guarantee success in life?” answered “I don’t care if Einstein is applying for a job in my company, if he doesn't fit into our corporate culture and values, I can’t work with him.” More recently some employers such as Tesla are changing the hiring requirements by offering highly specialized jobs to individuals that have the technical skills needed with no proof of formal education. “Educational background is irrelevant” Tesla founder Elon Musk (2020) said on Twitter, when he was recruiting for his Artificial Intelligence team. In a Harvard Business Review article, Fuller et al. (2022) remarked that “Employers who eliminated degree requirements, we found, frequently added more-detailed soft-skills requirements in their postings” (p.3). The debate whether academic knowledge (hard skills) or so-called soft skills have a bigger impact on employability is more alive than ever. My experience as a career counselor and mother For three years, in my role as a student success coach and career advisor for undergraduate business students, I couldn’t help but notice the determination of universities to maintain a very hard stance on the value of academic degrees for future success on one hand, and the struggle to produce students that are considered “employable” by a challenging contemporary labour market, since, as Scurry et al. (2020) notes: “labour market outcomes are seen as a key performance indicator for demonstrating the value of higher education for individuals and GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 5 society” (p.37). Historically, a traditional view of career development promoted a very stable and linear process based on a clear sequence of steps. In this context formal education with at least a bachelor’s degree would be the only way to access good job opportunities, that is employment aligned with the individual’s education. In such a stable environment there was more alignment between the needs of the employers and the purpose of universities. Students as early as primary school could predict the steps or education, they needed to take in order to achieve a certain level of employment. Nowadays, globalization, technology, artificial intelligence, major economic and health crises are just a few of the stressors our modern labour market has been facing. “Fundamentally, our world is less predictable than once thought. Our lives are uncertain, and our work is subject to changes over which we can have limited control” (Pryor & Bright, 2011). Empirical evidence (Scurry et al., 2020; Lum, 2017; Fayard & Mayer, 2023) points to a challenging and intimidating transitioning from the student role to the employee status. My son graduated Simon Fraser University with a degree in Political Science. He had started the degree with the intent to become a lawyer but, as it often happens in that age category, somewhere halfway, he decided against a career in law. This decision brought a lot of confusion into his life since the political science degree does not offer a clear pathway into the labour market and there is no easy-to-follow recipe for professional growth. He graduated his program with a high GPA, I coached him in job searching skills, yet his expectations of a workplace suitable for a degree holder were not met and, judging by the number of unsuccessful interviews, his employability skills were not shining through. It was not long before depression set in. He could not see the value in a degree anymore, his self-esteem was at one of the lowest points, and future looked grim. In my experience as a career counselor arguably the toughest concept to introduce to students is the unpredictability of the job search and the multitude of pathways that may lead to GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 6 an offer. After a lifetime of following a map drawn by family, school and society with very clear instructions and boundaries, few are prepared to deal with “maybe”, “potentially’, “could be but may not”. To be competitive, able to quickly transition and stay relevant in a changing labour market, students need to have a deeper understanding of who they are and what they value. Watching my son’s and many other students’ turmoil during this transitional phase sparked my interest in career resilience as a crucial skill on which employability is built, especially in the context of a challenging contemporary labour market that sends mixed signals about the importance of credentials. Viktor Frankl’s Existential Vacuum I was introduced to Victor Frankl’s (2006) counselling therapy through the Introduction to Counselling course – one of the electives in the Master of Education program at Thompson Rivers University, and I became very interested in understanding how it could be applied to career counselling, since job searching has been proven to be linked to high anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. In Frankl’s views, the existential vacuum is a result of low selfesteem, little or no self-knowledge and a lack of meaning in an individual’s life. In the last twenty years, social media platforms have raised the bar to unrealistic levels. It has become virtually impossible for youth to build a healthy self-esteem when they are forced to continuously compare with made up stories of overnight success, fame, and glory. All these are negatively impacting their mental health and instead of building on their strengths, they experience “hyperreflection” or” excessive attention” (Frankl, 2014, p.75) and focus on their perceived failures which can only lead to feelings of dissatisfaction with life, depression, increased anxiety, frustration, and hopelessness, characteristics of a meaningless life. Frankl argued that there are three ways of discovering the meaning in life: through creativity, by focusing on other people or by accepting suffering as a common part of life. “By not discovering GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 7 the meaning in their lives, men and women begin to experience existential frustration. The vacuum of meaninglessness (or nihilism) takes hold and existential neurosis sets in” (Schultze & Miller, 2003, p.143). My journey through the Master of Education at Thompson Rivers University has influenced the way I interpret the world around me, as a system of interconnected dimensions that is continuously shaped by external factors and shifting contexts. Employability can only be defined in the context of the current socio-political and economic trends, within a theoretical approach, and through a cultural lens. It is a complex concept that builds on resilience, selfawareness, worldviews, and social constructs. Resilience is related to how individuals respond to stressful situations. When individuals lack the ability to handle stress, mental health is suffering. Poor mental health lowers employability. Since Frankl’s (2006) logotherapy has been proven to help individuals suffering from depression discover their own meaning of life, a career counselling approach employing logotherapeutic techniques will help students move through pain and anxiety. Presenting My Argument In this paper I argue that students’ employability depends on their career resilience as much as on their academic achievements. The following reasons support my claim: enhancing students’ ability to bounce back from rejection and underemployment, and to reformulate goals when expectations are not met, increases their ability to quickly adapt to new realities and apply their academic knowledge in new, creative ways. Performance and progression at work has been linked to emotional regulation: individuals that can remain focused, grounded, and can control their emotions stand out for their resilience. In chapters two and three, I will show how a logotherapeutic approach to career education can build resilience and help students cope with adversity. My claim is contestable by GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 8 the argument that the career resilience concept is highly sensitive to exterior stressors such as students’ cultural and social capital, systemic structures, and personal life events and may not be sustainable for the long run by itself, without additional counselling. Ann Graber (2004) remarks that “Logotherapy focuses less on the origin of a given cause of suffering and more on overcoming it “(p. 130) may also be used to contest the validity of my claim: a solution-oriented logotherapeutic approach may ignore the real cause of suffering, thus the results may be short lived. Chapter two of this paper reviews research that tries to underpin the dimensions of employability, focusing on resilience and career resilience. Then, I will discuss logotherapy as the framework within which career resilience may be enhanced. Chapter three explores my experience as a career coach, focusing on how the theory can/is applicable through my personal experience teaching résumé writing. Chapter four will conclude my paper with a summary that includes a reflection of my own journey through the master’s program at Thompson Rivers University, and how it helped me reframe my own negative talk and faulty beliefs and improved my career resilience. Future implications for my argument and proposed intervention, and recommendations for future systemic changes will conclude my paper. Literature Review Preparing students for a successful career has become a very confusing and difficult task in the current socio-economic context. Scholars and employers agree that the current labour market is unpredictable and chaotic at times and poses a lot of stress on the mental health of our youth. A national survey of Canadian post-secondary students using counselling services on campus cited by Moghimi et al. (2023) revealed that 83.7% reported anxiety, and 86% were GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 9 depressed. “Compromised mental health may increase student distress, academic probations, dropouts, and challenges in finding future employment” (p.2). This chapter reviews the historical relationship between labour market and higher education, their connection to graduate employability and the consequences unemployment have on students’ mental health. I will then review literature that documents the positive results recorded when using a logotherapeutic approach to treat people with depression, anxiety, and PTSD. I will conclude the chapter with a look at resilience, and its direct impact on employability. Labour Market and Higher Education Throughout history universities’ contribution to their societies was knowledge. Higher education graduates were expected to add value to their economy by creating new processes, new products, and services. They were considered “social-elite” (Kelsall, 1972; Tomlinson, 2012) and had little trouble to get employment right after graduation. Both, the agrarian and industrial economy depended on unskilled workers more than skilled and they “approached product development in a linear and staged process, often in isolation from the customer” (Finch & Peacock, 2015, p.62). The way students viewed their university degree was a similar “four-year product development cycle in isolation from the customer” (p.62). The relationship between higher education and labour market was marked by “a relatively stable flow of highly qualified young people into well-paid and rewarding employment” (Tomlinson, 2012, p.25). Industry 4.0 brings in artificial intelligence, cloud technology and robotics. Things are moving fast and graduates entering the labour market are faced with an entire new set of demands. Higher education institutions need to prepare students for jobs that do not exist yet, for using technologies that have yet to be invented, and for solving problems that nobody has yet thought of (Kumar, 2007, Römgens at al., 2020). The financial crisis of the 2008, a stagnant GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 10 economy that brought unexpected unemployment and productivity challenges (Jackson & Tomlinson, 2020) and the pandemic we are slowly recovering from, are some of the main influences on the labour market skill demands. Higher education on the other hand has also changed and trends, such as massification and increased student fees together with the increased role of governments into the university governance process has created an imbalance. “Multiple entry pathways together with changes in how, where and when students consume their studies, demand agile responses from all facets of higher education” (Bennett et al., 2020, p.751). The idea that there must be a closer relationship between higher education institutions and employers has been identified as a common theme as “graduates are perceived as potential key players in the drive towards enhancing value-added products and services in […] economy” (Tomlinson, 2012, p. 25). There is also the argument that, students possess all skills demanded by the labour market but may be unaware of these skills or simply lack the ability to present them. Tomasson Goodwin et al. (2019) points out to research that argues that it is the universities responsibility “to help students not only to become more aware of their skills, but once aware, to better articulate the set skills to others” (p.446). Is the current structure of student services in higher education able to help students increase students’ self-awareness? To what extent are instructors willing to adapt their curriculum and incorporate activities meant to improve students’ ability to identify and articulate new skills? These are questions worth exploring in future research. Graduate Employability Becoming aware of their skills and their ability to articulate their skills to employers may help students secure employment but the concept of employability goes beyond this. Graduate employability is a considerably more complex research area than is sometimes GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 11 portrayed (Donald et al., 2019; Tomlinson 2012). There seems to be no universally accepted definition of employability but there is consensus around the importance of employability skills for a successful transition into the labour market. The effectiveness of the way employability is measured is debated by more than one researcher. "If employability is measured in the simplistic terms of whether or not a graduate has managed to secure a job within six months of graduating, it only provides a very vague and imprecise indication of what the student has gained" (Dacre Pool & Sewell, 2007, p. 278). Several sources cited by Clinkard (2018) agree that “in higher education there is a tendency to evaluate employability in terms of hard skills which may be technical, discipline or role specific” (p.376). The literature on employability is impressive. Finch and Peacock (2015) provided a thorough overview of the literature on employability building on Moreland’s definition “a set of skills, knowledge and personal attributes that make an individual more likely to secure and be successful in their chosen occupation to the benefit of themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy” (p.74). Their position was that “a university’s graduate’s capabilities can be placed into interdependent resource categories: intelligence resources, personality resources, meta-skill resources and job-specific resources” (Finch & Peacock, 2015, p. 63). Figure 1 depicts their proposed conceptual model to be further studied, where graduate employability is believed to rely on the systematic relationship between student’s intrinsic resources (personality traits such as conscientiousness and openness to experience, and intellectual resources such as performance intelligence and verbal intelligence), learned resources (meta-skills such as interpersonal skills and organizational skills, and job specific resources, such as knowledge, skills and passion) and the integrated dynamic capabilities (personal narrative and pre-graduate application). GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 12 Figure 1 Future research: a dynamic capabilities view of graduate employability. Note. Peacock & Finch, 2015, p.74 Römgens et al. (2020) take an interdisciplinary approach in their quest to define employability “for a unified overview of conceptual frameworks and agreement on definitions of the concept” (p.2588). It is easy to see that throughout literature common employability dimensions have been agreed upon are technical skills (disciplinary knowledge, job specific knowledge), cognitive skills (how we process information, intellectual resources) emotional knowledge, as well as metacognitive skills such as motivation and self-efficacy, selfmanagement, lifelong learning. Clinkard (2018) points to the rudimentary and simplistic measures applied to graduate employability in the complex context of today’s competitive labour market. Entrepreneurial attitudes such as opportunistic behaviour, self-awareness, identity exploration and reflection are identified in the new “employAgility’ concept by Knibbs (2015) as GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 13 cited by Clinkard (2018). There is an increasing number of scholars listed by Clinkard that are promoting the idea of “moving employability debate from skills towards discussion of entrepreneurial capabilities.” (p.14) where students adopt an attitude that opportunities are always present, waiting to be discovered. Frankl (2014) discusses some of the prisoners ‘tendency to look in the past, to avoid reality. “But in robbing the present of its reality … it became easy to overlook the opportunities … opportunities that really did exist” (p.72). Wallis (2021) equates employability with career readiness; career ready students have acquired higherorder, meta work skills that facilitate “a process of reflective, evaluative and decision- making processes” that allow them to “continuously recognise and capitalise on employment and training-related opportunities and integrate these with other aspects of the individual’s life” (Bridgstock as cited by Wallis, 2021, p.536). Defining employability from the scholastic perspective is of great importance, but employers’ understanding of the concept needs to be added to the discussion, since they are the ones influencing the demands of the labour market. Employer’s Feedback on Graduate Employability Traditionally employers have hired graduates for their advanced technical skills. However, there is evidence to suggest that they are now prioritising social and emotional skills (American Association of Colleges and Universities, 2013). A study on the future of skills found that in US and the UK interpersonal skills as well as high order cognitive skills (originality, fluency of ideas and active learning) together with decision making and judgement will continue to grow as importance (Bakhshi et al., 2017). In a Romanian study, it was reported that employers were more satisfied with graduates’ abilities in assuming responsibility, efficient activity planning and organization and promptness and efficient time management: “The results highlight a higher degree of importance attached to transversal competencies than to professional GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 14 competencies” (Deaconu et al., 2014, p 870). Rahman and Nie (2014) identified team orientation’, ‘supply chain-oriented knowledge’, ‘ability to see the big picture’, ‘cross-functional coordination skill’ and ‘negotiation skill’ (p.290) among the most important skills to succeed in the supply chain industry, for example. Researchers seem to agree that there is an increased demand for new graduates that possess the so-called soft skills. However, Pang et al. (2019) investigated how Hong Kong employers view graduate competencies that support graduates’ success in the workplace. The study concluded that neither the hard nor the soft category of skills were more important than the other. One explanation could be that “although employers may expect fresh graduates to possess leadership potential, they may well not have an immediate need for fresh graduates to take on leadership roles” (p.33). Determining employer’s views on graduate employability is of essential importance. Working with employers in determining which skills are the most needed at the beginning of the career and what level of competency is acceptable at each level will bring more clarity to universities on what to focus the curriculum on and what programs would be the most helpful. One important factor against this way of thinking is the current socio-political and economical context characterized by financial and humanitarian crisis that demand “non-linear complex models of action, and chaotic models to deal with chaotic situations” since “crises management requires non-linear thinking, flexible and fluctuating structures, and value systems that must transcend all barriers rapidly and instantaneously” (Farazmand, 2003, p.340). I am aligned with this perspective, and I believe that the structured and time-consuming approach of engagement between employers and higher education will continue to remain one step behind and miss the point in regard to delivering on graduate employability. This unfortunate fact will prolong the students’ confusion around the skills needed to enter and survive in the labour market and drives GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 15 an even higher unemployment rate among youth. In my experience, unemployment and depression seem to go hand in hand. The next section takes a deeper look at the negative influence job insecurity and unemployment have on mental health and supports my claim that higher education should prioritize teaching techniques that will support students through life transitions and thus enhance their resilience. Psychosocial Consequences of Unemployment The American Psychological Association [APA] online dictionary of psychology (2018) defines depression as a negative affective state, ranging from unhappiness and discontent to an extreme feeling of sadness, pessimism, and despondency, that interferes with daily life… altered eating or sleeping habits, lack of energy or motivation, difficulty concentrating or making decisions, and withdrawal from social activities. Arvidsdotter et al. (2016) provides a comparable definition for psychological distress: “a state of emotional suffering associated with stressors and demands that are difficult to cope with in daily life” (p. 687). There is a great number of research that links unemployment and underemployment with major depression disorder (Amiri, 2022; Högnäs et al., 2022), addiction (Nolte-Troha et al., 2023), and overall decreased physical health (Herber et al., 2019). Blustein et al. (2019) discusses the negative influence job insecurity and unemployment have on mental health, which then significantly impacts our health system, with major social and economic consequences. Globally an estimated 264 million people are affected by depression (James et al., 2018 as cited by Hobbs, 2021). Goodman et al. (2017) points to a global epidemic of youth unemployment “one that threatens economic growth and social stability” (para 4) for many years to come. In GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 16 2017 40% of the world’s unemployed were youth, with a global youth unemployment rate of 12.6%. (International Labour Office as cited by Goodman et al., 2017, para 4). Macrotrends.net(n.d.) reports a 15.58% youth unemployment rate in 2022, a slight decline from the reported 18.40% in 2019. Figure 2 presents a visual categorization of the effects unemployment can have on people. Drosos et al. (2021) argues there are three categories: welfare problems, psychiatric disorders, and psychological difficulties. The research identifies a lack of meaning in life as one of the psychological difficulties, alongside low self-esteem, and feelings that there is no way out. This resonates with Frankl’s (2014) notion of existential vacuum, which he describes as “the expression of a sense of meaninglessness, or of that inner emptiness” (p.40). Figure 2 Unemployment Effects Note: Drosos et al. ,2021, p. 40 Logotherapy, Meaning in Life, and Existential Vacuum Viktor Frankl’s (2014) logotherapy is a method of psychotherapy “one could define …by the literal translation as healing through meaning.” (p.xviii) The three tenets of GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 17 logotherapy: will to meaning, meaning to life and freedom of will are to be considered the guiding lights in the search for meaning in life. But what is meaning? “Man is responsible for giving the right answer to a question, for finding the true meaning of a situation. And meaning is something to be found rather than to be given, discovered rather than invented” (p.42-43). It is up to each individual to discover the right answer and true meaning for the situation life presents, as meaning is rather personal and not universal (McDonald & Perry ,2022; Panza & Gale, 2008). The desire for meaning is “a natural driving force of behaviour and personal development regardless of sex, age or status in society” (Stepura, 2017, p.57). “Meaning in life is … a factor that makes a unique contribution to the sphere of well-being and happiness” (Krok ,2018, p.96) especially during insecure, troubled times. Meaning is found through creative work, in enjoyment of “beauty, art, or nature”, and “in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces” (Frankl, 2006, p.67). Suffering is an unavoidable part of life. Unemployment is a time of uncertainness, anxiety provoking, and stress that fit Frankl’s explanation of a “provisional existence of unknown limit”: uncertain and with no defined limit in sight. The longer unemployed, the more likely to experience life as in a prison and to become occupied with retrospective thoughts since “anything out of the barbed wire became remote – out of reach and, in a way, unreal” (p.71). Unfortunately, when focused on the past, becomes “easy to overlook the opportunities to make something positive” (p.71) out of a challenging situation. Frankl’s (2014) existential theory attempts to explain how is that more individuals experience feelings of emptiness and meaninglessness in “an age of affluence” where “we are offered a lot of possibilities” (p.45). They experience these feelings, he concludes, because nowadays, people have increasingly become retrospective and introspective – focused on the past and on their inner self instead of finding meaning outside of themselves. Education, Frankl (2016) believes, has to move beyond “transmitting traditions and knowledge” but “to refine that GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 18 capacity which allows man to find unique meanings” (p.44) and “meaningful attitudes” especially in “the tragic triad of human existence” made up of “pain, guilt and death” (p.51) The role of an educator is not to pour information into the learner (Smallman, 2014, McDonald & Perry, 2022, Freire, 2005) but to become an agent of change that “require students to courageously discover what their learning means to them by accepting ambiguity and taking risks in their learning” (McDonald & Perry, 2022, p.568). Instead, the educational system “often adds to the existential vacuum (Frankl, 2014, p.63) because of its reductionist views. Critically examining the career education in schools, it is easy to see the simplistic, transactional, one size fits all approach that continues to focus on outcomes such as GPA or number of graduates. School may prepare students with the knowledge needed to survive in the labour market, but does it consider their ontological needs? “A holistic education asks learners to discover what their learning means to them” (McDonald & Perry, 2022, p.567). When students figure out how to use the knowledge towards becoming a better version of themselves, we think of them as resilient. The next section reviews the concept of resilience and connects its dimensions with Logotherapy, as a framework for the practical applications in chapter three. Resilience Count Alexander Ilych Rostov, the main character in Towles’ (2016) novel A Gentleman in Moscow is the embodiment of resilience. The thirty-year-old Russian aristocrat is sentenced by the new Bolshevik regime to spend the rest of his life in a small room in the attic of Hotel Metropol in Moscow. Guided by Grand Duke’s advice when his parents died of cholera, count Rostov faces his new living conditions with dignity and purpose, because “if a man does not master his circumstances, then he is bound to be mastered by them” (p.18). Grand Duke seems to have the same philosophy of life as Frankl (2014): “when we are no longer able to change a situation… we are challenged to change ourselves.” (p.112) Rostov bonds with GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 19 Kutuzov, the one-eye cat that wanders into his room and decides to stay and strikes a friendship with the very young Nina. Years later when Nina is sent to Siberia, she trusts Rostov with her five-year-old daughter, Sofia. It is in raising Sofia that Rostov finds his main purpose in life. Metropol Hotel was filled with memories of his good old life; it would have been expected for Count Rostov to dwell on memories and mourn the loss of his status and possessions. Instead, he focuses on present and is making the best out of it since 'imagining what might happen if one's circumstances were different [is] the only sure route to madness” (p.114) or, as Frankl put it: “It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future” (p.73) There is a large body of research on resilience but, just as in the case of employability, there is no universal definition. One aspect scholars agree upon is that resilience is tightly connected to the uniqueness of each individual. It has been linked to strengths-based and positive psychology and “was understood as a resource to negotiate an adverse or challenging environment resulting in a positive outcome for the individual” (Scurry et al., 2020, p.37). Zunker (2016) highlights that resilience is built on the strengths of the individual, which, in turn, develop when there is support from family and friends, connection with communities, caring teachers and counselors, to name just a few conditions. The concept of strength gained momentum with Drucker (2006) who boldly declared that “one cannot build on weakness…. strengths are the true opportunity” (p.84) and continues today, when almost every university uses some type of strengths finding assessments, inadvertently continuing to promote the idea that we either are born with some strengths (resilience among them) or we are not. While there are merits to identifying strengths, I argue that using this approach with youth provides a false picture of resilience. I agree with scholars that believe resilience can be taught, not one strength is important, but the relation between all or some of our strengths and the cultural, socio-economic, and political context within the individual exists at one specific time. GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 20 In their review of the concept of resilience as it applies to graduates, Scurry et al. (2020) point out to the fact that research tends to view resilience either as a “stand alone phenomenon” or as an “interconnected system, incorporating adaptability, goal re-setting, recovery, and selfefficacy” (p.37). The role of context in understanding resilience is highlighted by several studies. (Turner et al., 2017, Ungar, 2011, Scurry et al., 2020). Ungar, for example, explains resilience as a process and Roberts (2024) “as a multi-level construct that encompasses the capacity of individuals … to adapt and respond to adversity” and the focus for positively influencing individual’s resilience should be on “enhancing knowledge, modifying attitudes, and cultivating skills necessary for health-protecting behaviour” (pp.2-3). Figure 3 presents a model of resilience that identifies four interrelated dimensions: biological, sociocultural, social, and psychological (Sue et al., 2014 as cited by Zunker, 2016, p. 377). Figure 3 Model of Resilience Source: Zunker (2016) p. 377 Meaning and purpose in life, connection to others and spirituality are all considered as important aspects influencing resilience. In searching for the meaning of life, Frankl (2014) GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 21 urges individuals to step away from the crowd, to determine their own values and make their own meaning, “to be self-directed” in their learning. It is the same entrepreneurial attitude that Clinkard (2018) believes should be considered when talking about employAgility. Knowles (1975) as cited by McDonald & Perry (2022), believes that “self-directed learning is necessary for survival as an individual, and for the human race… [it is] a prerequisite for living in this new world” (p.567). Taking responsibility for their own development, as Frankl (2014) put it “responsibleness [is] the very essence of human existence” (p.109). It is the role of higher education to adapt their curriculum and the way they provide student services to support students develop a proactive, enterprising attitude that is built on a deep understanding of their identity and guided by their conscience as defined by Frankl (2014): “the intuitive capacity of man to find out the meaning of a situation” (p.43). The next chapter proposes a practical application that uses logotherapeutic techniques to guide students toward self-discovery, teaches self-management and models taking responsibility. Application Introduction After six years in the non-profit sector working as a career counselor, I felt it was time to look for a different challenge although I loved my job, helping individuals with multiple barriers find employment. The opportunity presented and I took on a new role as a career counselor with one of the universities in the Fraser Valley. I had always been curious about university life in Canada, since all my education was completed on a different continent, in a different education system. One of the obvious differences between the two educational systems was that one was interested only in the cognitive development of the students, while in Canada, there are built in services to support the well-being of students (mental, physical, emotional, and vocational). I was excited to learn about how the community of academic advisors, counselors GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 22 and coaches supports the students’ academic journey, most specifically interested in understanding how graduate employability is understood and developed. In this paper I argue that students’ employability depends on career resilience as much as on their academic performance and achievements, therefore it is the university’s responsibility to introduce students to career resilience. In my role as a career counsellor, I have examined how higher education prepare students for graduation. Below, I will discuss issues I have identified in the way career education is delivered that hinder the process of building resilience for students. Then I will propose a future-oriented intervention that encourages selfawareness, self-management, and a proactive approach to career management. Issues in Career Education in Higher Education Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen In universities, career education is a shared responsibility: academic advisors, career counselors, student assistants, co-op, and other instructors – they all provide vocational guidance. Academic advisors have little to no training in counselling or career development since their role is to help students navigate through the university policies, graduation requirements, and direct to other resources as needed. Student assistants are recruited from the student body and are mostly responsible for clerical tasks. Instructors’ and co-op instructors’ knowledge on career education varies. The learning objectives in courses such as Co-op 1101 Job Search Techniques are strictly related to securing a co-op placement and less about developing a growth-mindset (Dweck, 2007). In addition to the university staff and faculty, there are several professionals with different levels of experience in the labour market that either offer their expertise or are invited to participate to engage with students during various events organized. They all share some knowledge on how to get a job, how to write a résumé or how to perform during an interview, GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 23 but it is mostly based on a very subjective and personal experience. In the three years in my role, out of the 45 – 50 professionals invited to speak, only two had had more than five years of experience in a supervisory role that included hiring functions. The rest of them were at the beginning of their professional journey. With such an affluence of perspectives and opinions shared, students become confused and overwhelmed and instead of being involved in the process of building their careers, they become compliant with the advice they receive from the professional they’ve created the most trustful relationship, or they perceive as the most accomplished, but “being inadequately informed about the labour market …increases challenges in the transition to work” (SRDC, 2020, p.12). Having too many cooks in the kitchen poses another problem: lack of accountability. Almost every party involved is reaching to what I call the low hanging fruits of career education: résumé writing, interview preparation, job searching techniques, or lectures on the importance of being flexible and resilient. There is nobody taking the responsibility of creating a program that decodes the concepts, links them to career development, and teaches students how to improve their self-awareness, how to use critical thinking when making career decisions and how to adjust their attitude in the face of adversity. There is a relatable scene in episode 15 of the TV drama Schitt’s Creek, where Moira, is teaching her son, David how to make enchiladas: Moira: “Next step is to fold in the cheese!” David: “What does that mean? What does fold in the cheese mean?” Moira: “You fold it in.” David: “I understand that but how? How do you fold it? … Moira: “David, just fold it in! I cannot show you everything! “ (Still Watching Netflix, 2021, 0:45) GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 24 Even the simplest concepts like “folding in the cheese” need to be explained the first time. When too many cooks, but no chef, there is little control over how accurate, how current, and how consistent the information reaching the students is, and even less overseeing and understanding on how they apply that information in building their employability. If students learn time management in the Organizational Development course, cultural awareness in Counselling Theories and reflective writing in Training and Development, there is no one to make sure they know how to ‘fold the cheese in”, or how to apply these skills in encouraging career curiosity, exploration, and flexibility. The Missed Mosaic Perspective There is a lot of talk about multiculturalism, different values, and culturally unique perspectives in higher education. The programs and services in place continue to follow a standardized approach to career education that acknowledges multiculturalism but has not moved towards helping students really embrace who they are and where they come from, their values and life situations so as they can empower themselves and build a better life. The student body has a very high number of international students that had no opportunities to reflect on the transition, to embrace their new life circumstances and find their balance. Students with the same cultural background I met with for career counseling were looking for jobs in the government. The job titles did not matter that much as long as the employer was the provincial or federal government. After probing more and trying to understand their perspective, together we came to the realization that they valued safety and stability more than anything. From there we could expand the job search and look for jobs with other employers that met the students’ values. Unfortunately, the large number of students that need to be served versus the two career counselors in the career development center left no time and no resources to meet with students GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 25 for counselling sessions that could have helped them in the self-discovery process and help them build their self-esteem and resilience. Instead, students are encouraged to attend generic webinars that tell them how they should behave, talk, value and present to blend in rather than stand out. The Things You Can Find if You Don’t Stay Behind! (Dr. Seuss, 2019, 8:18) The role of career counselors in universities continues to be that of an information keeper or a resource. Students are directed to career development centers to learn information on careers and pathways to careers, how to write a résumé and job searching techniques. The programs I was asked to deliver, were built on an outdated concept: “the rational choice paradigm” (SRDC, 2020, p.13) where students are expected to have enough information to make the choices, they believe, will get the best results. The main ways of interacting with students continue to be rather passive well-structured webinars or workshops with little opportunity for discussions or interaction between students and facilitators, and on demand half an hour one on one sessions. The information provided is mostly past-oriented and invites to conformism. Interested in accounting? You are explained the pathway to accounting through the CPA designation and the importance of subject-specific knowledge or hard skills. Students are encouraged to follow the very well beaten path of networking with CPA professionals. The program description for a bachelor’s in accounting lists the skills needed to succeed in the field: “students who excel in the accounting profession have numerical aptitude, strong critical thinking skills, and effective written and oral communications skills” (Kwantlen Polytechnic University, n.d.). Job market forecasting, future demands on skills and occupations, external stressors that could and will impact the number of available jobs or the future of certain professions were not easy to find, or information was not consistent. The speech around the future of work is kept very general, yet a quick search on the future of careers in accounting will GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 26 consistently generate answers that indicate advising, consulting, analytical and interpersonal skills will become the most needed skills in accounting, since computers will take over basic accounting tasks and the scope of accounting is shifting from performing calculations to analyzing trends and communicating with clients. It looks to me that the accounting alphabet is not stopping at letter z anymore! In my previous chapters I have built the case that the simple act of listening and following subjective advice, will not help students build any life-long skills or develop any transferable skill to use next time they will look for work. Many students I coached on résumé writing for example, could not explain why they structured the document in a certain way, for example, other than “This is how I was told to do it …”. There was no reflection or critical thinking behind the process of putting together a document that is hailed as “potentially the most important document of one’s career.” (Holgate, 2017, para1) The questions educators and career counselors should be preoccupied with are: how prepared are our future graduates to make decisions? Have we enhanced their decision-making skills to a level that will sustain a meaningful life while living true to their value system? Have we encouraged their curiosity “to courageously discover what their learning means to them” (McDonald & Perry, 2022, p.568) and thus successfully negotiate challenging situations? Context In my new role I was responsible for working with 3rd and 4th year business students that did not participate in the co-op program. These were students that for various reasons, did not complete a co-op placement in their field. It is worth noting here that there is tuition attached to a co-op course, the co-op placements are not guaranteed, and the program adds two or three semesters to the graduation date. Internships were marketed as an option to the co-op program since they had no tuition attached and could be completed on a part time basis during an GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 27 academic semester. As internships were granted based on GPA and employability skills students already have, they attracted students that `needed them the least, while the ones that really needed help were left behind making their transition into the labour market an even more difficult process. All students I met with reported very high levels of stress, a less than optimistic outlook on the future after university yet, paradoxically, had very high expectations from the after-graduation employment. It looked to me that they were still experiencing a very linear way of thinking and expected their degree would pave their way into a management role with little or no effort from their part. Unemployment was almost a tabu word; one of the students I met would call it the “U” word and would cross their fingers while vaguely talking about it. The degree seemed to be perceived as a good luck charm against the evil. Although extreme, this exemplifies the impact transition into the workplace has on the students’ mental health. A very high percentage of all students I met with during the three years (92%) reached out to a career counselor for a very specific reason: résumé writing services. This is when I started looking for ways to use résumé writing to teach students reflection, self-management, and responsibility. The Five-Year Résumé Exercise The workshops and the courses on résumé writing I have attended have not changed much over the years. Career counselors like to present Da Vinci’s letter to Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Mila, dated 1482, as the first ever known résumé. In the letter, Da Vinci is asking for employment by presenting himself as an accomplished engineer and architect with people skills, before introducing his skills in art because he recognized the duke was looking for military engineers at the time, not artists. Counselors encourage students to apply the same critical thinking when writing a résumé as it must consider the needs of the employer first. The learning GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 28 objectives set for a one and a half, maybe two hours workshop are quite ambitious, but rarely if ever accomplished: develop and apply setting goals, apply critical thinking, develop job search strategies, learn to use planning and organizing tools, maintain records, communication, decision making; and negotiation skills. I have yet to meet a student that has accomplished all these objectives. One of the elective courses I chose to take in the Master of Education program with Thompson Rivers University was the Career Counselling and Development. During the research I was conducting for one of the assignments, I read an older article that presented the résumé writing not as a job searching tool that can be taught in a highly structured two-hour presentation but as a career planning exercise, or as a process that would span over the entire semester. (Laker & Laker, 2007) The exercise builds on the argument that in our professional life, there is an obvious link between the actions and activities we perform today, and the future career opportunities open to us. The exercise is simple to understand and follow. Students are first encouraged to create a current résumé identifying their present-day education, work experience, skills, and capabilities. Over the second step, with guidance from a counselor, students are asked to draft a new résumé that represents who they want to be in five years from the date: additional education they want to complete, aimed job titles, volunteer activities, honors, or awards and so on. The next steps encourage students to create a plan and identify goals, then break down the goals into manageable tasks towards achieving their vision. It is the future orientation of this exercise and the skills that students develop while working towards accomplishing the steps that sparked my interest. Another course in the graduate program, Introduction to Counselling discussed Viktor Frankl’s (2014) logotherapy as the first cognitive theory that focuses on how thoughts GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 29 influence our behaviour and actions. The five-year résumé follows the logotherapeutic methods in its future-orientation, the way it encourages proactivity, self-reflection, and self-management. It is about discovering one’s own true meaning since “the exercise asks students to design their future in synchrony with their desired objectives concerning life, family, and environment.” (Laker & Laker, 2007, p.129) Maybe the contribution most aligned with Frankl’s theory is the powerful way it influences the way students think, the way cognition is reframed leading to behaviour changes driven mostly by students. The success of this exercise, point out the authors, is the new way “they understand and appreciate the value of career planning and… career management.” (Laker & Laker, 2007, p.136). By building on the concept behind the five-year résumé exercise and using logotherapeutic techniques such as self-distance, paradoxical intention, dereflection, and Socratic dialogue, counselors can teach students more than strictly how to write a résumé: they learn to reflect, evaluate, make decisions, and self-manage their future. I am presenting next a revised intervention that focuses more on the capacity of students to self-direct their knowledge, modify their attitude in the face of adversity and prioritize their well-being by engaging in “healthprotecting behaviours” (Ungar, 2011, p.3). Snoopy, Where Am I Going? (SWAIG) This new intervention follows the structure of the five-year résumé as explained above. It is a semester-long activity with weekly opportunities for students to meet and discuss their experiences, any roadblocks or any aha moments they experienced. The meetings are informal, and the meeting space is supportive and free of judgement for students to feel safe to share negative feelings they may experience. The acronym SWAIG, will be explained as a GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 30 combination of swag (cool, confidence) and sway (influence): students’ confidence going through the steps will be influenced. Figure 4 Snoopy struck by melancholy. No author, (n.d.) [Pinterest image] Snoopy, where am I going? is a self-directed learning experience. “Self-directed learning is vital in today’s world and workforce… is also purposeful: Individuals initiate selfdirected learning to find solutions to concrete goals” (Brandt, 2020, p.3). Self-regulation, motivation, personal responsibility, and autonomy are identified as the four dimensions of selfdirected learning, dimensions that are valued in logotherapy as well. Frankl’s will to meaning is based on responsibility. Graber (2004) observes “To bring a person to an awareness of his responsibility is the very essence of Franklian theory” (p.28). Students will be introduced to the concept of self-directed learning in the first meet up, followed up with opportunities to reflect on and discuss responsibility and autonomy. Just as Laker & Laker (2007) stress out the importance of holding judgement and being careful not to project the counselors’ “own values and judgements onto the career GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 31 aspirations of the students” (p.135), the counselor or instructor facilitating this new exercise will be aware that guidance, not judgement is what students need. Students at all levels could benefit of this exercise: whether in their first or last year of university, unsure about their choices, students needing career exploration, students that are confused, depressed, doubt their future and experience feelings of emptiness, they all will benefit from engaging in the activities. Content of the exercise: Noddings (2002) defined education as “a constellation of encounters, both planned and unplanned, that promote growth through the acquisition of knowledge, skills, understanding and appreciation” (p.283). Through a combination of planned encounters between students and content, students and other professionals, planned and unplanned discussions and opportunities for reflection, students will become aware of the realities of a chaotic labour market where plans need to be adjusted continuously, professionals need to be ready to learn new skills and adjust to new realities and new responsibilities and will understand the impact careers have on other life roles. SWAIG will impact their career and life resilience. SWAIG in Five Steps Step 1: Wheel of Life At this first step students are asked to complete the Wheel of Life ® (Elsey, 2022), an exercise used in life coaching that provides an overview of what dimension is off balance in their life at that moment. It also provides direction on what aspect of the life to be more intentional and dedicate more time and effort, what area needs improvement and transformation. The idea behind this exercise is that in order to live a happy, successful life, there has to be balance in all or most aspects of your life. A balanced life is a resilient life. One of the models presented in the previous chapter looked at resilience as an interconnected system of biological, psychological GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 32 sociocultural and social dimensions while Frankl (2014) points out to the individual uniqueness, that any human has the freedom to determine their own values and make their own meaning. The Wheel of Life is a simple tool that provides students the opportunity to take the time to reflect about what is important to them with no judgement or pressure. Another benefit of this exercise is that there is something to learn about oneself every day: through difficult times it points out to where one needs to pay more attention, during happy times it deepens the understanding of what makes one happy. First, students are asked to think about and create their own Wheel of Life by choosing six or eight dimensions important to them. They can choose from their life roles (husband/wife, father/mother, colleague, team member, community leader, or friend), and from dimensions of life such as health, positive attitude, career, education, family, friends, financial freedom, physical challenge, pleasure, or public service. They are encouraged to create their own combination, reflecting the areas that they consider priorities in life. There are no good or bad choices. Once the choices are selected, students are asked to grade or circle a number on a scale of one to ten in each dimension, where one represents “I am doing a very poor job” and ten “I am excelling at it”. Using a coloured pen, they are then asked to connect these numbers and reflect for a moment over the visual. They will then be asked to choose the “ideal” scores in each dimension and connect the new numbers with a new colour. It is important to discuss with students that in order to live a balanced life you don’t have to score only tens. We are looking to achieve balance first, then improvement. But if they liked to achieve a ten, how would a ten look like? GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 33 Figure 5 is an example of a completed wheel of life. It is easy to see the dimensions that need attention. Visualization of the web is the first step in the transformation process but needs to be followed by reflections. Figure 5 Wheel of Life Note: Wheel of life, Sutton, 2020 Sutton (2020) offers a list of questions to guide the reflection process, such as: • When you look at the shape of the wheel, how do you feel? • What surprises you the most? • Which category would you most like to improve? • What category would you most like to start with? • What small steps would have the most significant impact on your satisfaction? • Could a single action improve more than one area? GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE • What would it take to increase the satisfaction with only one point? • Why did you give this score? • Is there anything that might add value to this are of your life that may affect your score? • Is there anything missing from this are of your life that may affect your score? 34 To move to the next step, students must develop a mission statement for their life and build an action plan with SMART goals aligned with their mission statement. Step Two: Suffering is Inevitable The reality graduates face is less glamorous than what they have been told or lead to believe: in the SRDC report (2020) it is noted that “nearly one out of every five universityeducated people in Canada workforce works in a job that requires at most a high school education” (p.8). There is an increasing number of researchers that are trying to understand why a high percentage of graduates face a difficult transition into employment. One of the causes I highlighted in this paper is the poor understanding of the current labour market and the need for career educators to teach students flexibility, creativity and entrepreneur abilities while portraying a realistic picture of what future life-work model looks like. At this step, students will be presented a traditional career – life model and the newer lifelong learning understanding of life-work relationship, (SRDC, 2020) where periods of employment alternate with unemployment or back to school. Mental health, finances, personal life will all be affected by unemployment. Students will be advised to go back to their Wheel of Life and reflect on how a low score in the career dimension will affect all other dimensions. Figure 6 presents a great visual of the differences between the two pathways. The objective of this step is to normalize unemployment as a life challenge that most people experience at least once in their lifetime and not a personal flaw or weakness. It is also an effective way to invite students to reflect on their false or outdated belief that a traditional career GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 35 course is still possible in the 21st century, a time that continues to be impacted by technology, humanitarian crises, and globalization. Figure 6 Changing Life Course Models Source: SRDC Report, 2020, p. 7 After reflecting on how life will change during unemployment, the counselor will introduce the concept of attitude. During the informal discussion students will be asked to share events in their life, they had no control over. There are some potential examples: landlord increased the rent, they got the flue, and they had to miss an exam, the government has changed the visa requirements overnight, etc. Students will then address the question What choices did you have? Frankl (2014) believed that one way to finding the meaning of life is through attitude towards life challenges. The discussion will underline the fact that there is always a choice in life. “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is the ability to choose one’s attitude in any given GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 36 circumstance” (Frankl, 2006, p.66). The focus will be mainly on what is in the students’ control and less on what cannot be controlled. Figure 7 What I can control Chubb, 2022, https://www.facebook.com/MelanieChubbCounsellor/ To move to the next step students will have to complete a reflective exercise on the following scenario: You have been unemployed for three months but alas, finally you went through three rounds of interviews, and you have a job offer. It is your first day and you have just arrived at your new workplace just to find a notice on the door that the company has filed for bankruptcy and all employees were let go. • Reflect on all categories in figure 6. • Be specific on how you will handle the challenge. Follow up questions to be addressed in the action plan with specific actions and timelines: • How do you prepare for unemployment? GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE o 37 Saving money – do you know how to build/adjust a budget? What else do you need to learn to be financial savvy? Have a look at your Wheel of Life and adjust the action plan on the Money & Finances dimension. o Making tough decisions like not going out every Saturday, learning to cook; finding deals, sharing rent, etc.…) – adjust your Wheel of Life action plan. • What should you do during unemployment? o Maintain well -being – find free meditation classes on YouTube maybe. o Learn a new skill – free resources. o Volunteer – Find meaning by caring for others. Step Three: My Gifts to Life & Step Four: Life’s Gifts to me For the next two steps students will engage in a process of self-discovery to better understand who they are, what their strengths and capabilities, personality, and values are. To accomplish this, they will create a current résumé. They can choose to follow the standard résumé format or, they can create their own. The exercise is not meant to teach them the well accepted rules of this job application, but to learn how to self-evaluate and better understand who they are, what they have accomplished, how they showed up for their team every day, what their values are, and how emotionally mature they are. Staying true to the learning objectives of this exercise, they will not be provided any handout or assessment. Students will use research skills, critical thinking, and creativity to complete the two steps. For step three they will have to compile data that represents their professional experience, education, other professional activities, volunteer work, personal interests, personality, and soft skills. GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 38 Step four will challenge their creativity and resourcefulness, as they are asked to research one or two fields of activity or industries they think as the opposite of what they are studying for, identify one to three job titles they could apply for and create a realistic job application. (e.g. a student in accounting could look at a job as a music teacher – if their hobby is playing the guitar) Step Five: Conclusion This last step is to reflect on the challenges encountered while going through the steps, what solutions they found to their problems and what they have learned during the intervention. Some of the discussion points they will have to address in the final paper are: • What have you learned about the future of work? • What attitudes (if any) have you learned or changed during this exercise? • Will use the Wheel of Life in the future? If yes, how, and why? If no, why not? • How will you face your fears from now on? • Explain three to four tools and techniques you are adopting to protect your well-being and health during stressful times? • How will you show responsibility for your life from now on? • How will you show responsibility for your career from now on? Synopsis The SWAIG exercise is designed to help students face the future with resilience. It goes beyond teaching them job searching skills like résumé writing that nowadays can be found in abundance through a quick search on the internet. They learn how to evaluate and re-evaluate their priorities, how to create plans and adjust these plans to manage life during good times and especially bad times. They learn to face their fears by being proactive and by seeking knowledge. By completing all the activities students are guided towards self-management. GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 39 There is a new understanding of career – life balance. Career planning is discovered as a dynamic, life-long process that requires students to take responsibility for their lives, not as a sequence of steps whenever facing unemployment. Career education through the existential framework of Frankl (2014) can be a successful approach to engaging students with their future. It can also be the right approach to support and empower students from multicultural backgrounds since invites them to discover their uniqueness in values, beliefs and spirituality and build a successful life in accordance with them. Conclusion Review of Paper Faced with a sudden and drastic change in his personal circumstances, count Alexander Rostov (Towles, 2016), eventually chooses to build a life with meaning inside the hotel that has become his prison. The question that everyone asked throughout his worry-free youth “What is to become of you Alexander?” (p.83) will finally find an answer when he is trusted to raise Sofia. It is this character’s ability to stay open and curious and continue his quest for meaning in life under adverse conditions that inspires the reader and teaches a valuable lesson in resilience and adaptability. This paper addresses resilience as an important determinant of graduate employability. With the frequent and unpredictable at times changes in the socio-economic landscape, the expectations society and individuals have from higher education have shifted. New graduates are to handle a chaotic future, with little certainty around employment opportunities. Academic knowledge has proven it is not enough to succeed in these conditions. Without strong skills and capabilities to reframe rejection, to engage curiosity and creativity, and to stay grounded emotionally in tough situations, graduates are deemed unfit for employment. Schools that continue to prioritize academic knowledge over career resilience fail at producing GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 40 graduates able to shift and adapt to new realities. The paper contributes to this argument by advocating for redefining graduate employability in terms of career resilience. My interest in resilience has stemmed from my own journey in life. As a career counselor in higher education, I have observed the shift in employers’ recruitment and hiring requirements and the slow, and confused response of universities that are not ready to transform and expand their programs and services to incorporate this new understanding of graduate employability. In the first chapter I discussed graduate employability through my experience as a career counselor in a local university and as a mother of a university graduate of a program that does not offer a clear pathway into employment. Research points to a decline in mental health as common among students transitioning into labour market and the need to build optimism prior to graduation. Logotherapy has been proven successful in treating patients with PTSD, anxiety, and depression, therefore it promises to help students build techniques and strategies to cope with life challenges. The second chapter provided the theoretical foundation for my argument. I presented an extensive literature review on employability and the impact the lack of career resilience has on the students’ well-being. Their successful application of academic knowledge in a tumultuous labour market depends on a high self-awareness and strong self-management skills. The tight relationship between higher education and economy has been influenced over time by the various changes in the economic, social, political, and cultural norms. And yet research points to a difference in how graduate employability is defined in higher education, with a focus on hard skills, versus a more complex definition outside of academia, that prioritizes attitudes and entrepreneurial capabilities, such as self-awareness, identity exploration and reflection (Clinkard, 2018). GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 41 Unemployment and underemployment are to be expected in modern times. A lack of meaning in life, inability to look for a way out of the situation, low self-esteem, and a fixation on the past rather than future are among the most reported consequences of unemployment amongst youth. Research cited in this chapter supports logotherapy as the framework within which various dimensions of career resilience are introduced to students to enhance their employability throughout life. Chapter three offered a practical application of my argument. The shared responsibility of career education, the one size fits all approach that misses the multicultural approach are just a couple of the issues identified in higher education. The outdated concept that measures employability by the number of placements and career departments’ effectiveness by the number of students attending the workshops, are proven ineffective in building student employability (Dey & Cruzvergara, 2014). One of the most important contributions of the intervention Snoopy Where Am I Going? proposed is its ability to raise questions and the opportunities it provides to students to reflect on where they are without getting stuck and overwhelmed. It offers them simple techniques and tools to move them forward even at their worst. It emphasizes the importance of self-management, initiative, and reflection in enhancing resilience and it showcases the effective application of logotherapeutic techniques. Moving through the steps, students learn techniques that will help them self-manage their life, navigate with self-confidence the ups and especially downs thrown at them, and take initiative. The paper thus contributes to the argument that career planning is an ongoing, dynamic process that is not entirely in our control but there are techniques that can help students find meaning in their suffering, and purpose in life. My paper has successfully argued why universities need to shift their understanding of graduate employability to include career resilience. To help them successfully navigate change GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 42 and chaos universities have to teach healthy habits that will protect students’ health and wellbeing throughout their life and potentially take some future pressure off a health system already struggling. Implications Graduate employability continues to be a complex and well debated topic inside and outside of higher education. This paper has demonstrated that employability goes further than academic knowledge (hard skills) and soft skills (empathy, teamwork, etc.) These are still important but not enough. The new, dynamic labour market needs employees ready to shift priorities overnight, engage creatively with the work environment and find their own opportunities, and stay grounded and focused, connected to spiritual and cultural values when faced with rude realities. “If we are to educate for employability rather than employment, for life rather than for a job, our concern should move beyond graduate employment to focus on the development of graduates who are prepared to meet the demands of life and work well beyond their discipline” (Bennett, 2019 p.52). Enhancing resilience should be the responsibility of education at any level. Suffering is part of life and life is in session always. My paper demonstrates that it is necessary for policy makers, university administrators, senior leaders, and faculty to reengage in the discussion about how to define graduate employability, who provides career education, and what are the learning objectives of each intervention and curriculum. There is a lot of work that can be done to eliminate the current redundancies and to make sure the programming in place is aligned with the most comprehensive definition of resilience. A new alliance between career services and counselling is ideal since career educators may not be aware of counselling theories and techniques that could support their work. I do not recommend career counselors to take on counselling tasks unless under the strict GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 43 supervision of clinical counsellors or, following their own career advice, pursuing more education, getting trained in various theories and therapies. To move onto creating a better support for enhancing resilience and preparing students for life career and clinical counseling should work together to develop new programs to put out resilient graduates. This is the way to drive the number of placements, increase the university profile and be recognized as a forwardthinking organization. GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY AND RESILIENCE 44 References American Association of Colleges and Universities (2013). It takes more than a major: Employer priorities for college learning and student success. Washington, DC. https://aacu.org/sites/default/files/files/LEAP/KeyFindingsfrom2013SurveyofEmployers.p df. American Psychological Association (2018, March 19). APA Dictionary of Psychology. APA. https://dictionary.apa.org/depression Amiri, S. (2022). Unemployment associated with major depression disorder and depressive symptoms: A systematic review and meta-analysis. 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