UNDERSTANDING PLANNING STUDENTS’ SELF-PERCEIVED EMPLOYABILITY IN AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Abstract

Planning students are entering an increasingly competitive professional labour market. To understand their selfperceivedemployability and identify the employability-enhancing strategies they engage in to improve their graduateemployment prospects, this paper analyses survey data collected from 106 undergraduate students at a large Australianuniversity. Three key themes are identified as important for graduate employability from the perspective of planningstudents: education; personal attributes and assets; and appropriate professional experience. This study finds thatmany respondents were critical of the extent to which they believed their university studies were positively positionedfor the real world of planning and positively positioned them to succeed in the graduate employment market relativeto other planning graduates. To address these limitations, respondents emphasised the importance of developingpersonal and professional networks with peers and engaging in skills-enhancing activities, and revealed an expectationthat they may need to engage in unpaid professional work experience. However, notwithstanding these efforts toactively moderate the impact of self-perceived personal skills and experiential deficits on their employability, therewas a nascent acknowledgement that despite investing significant effort into developing networks, getting professionalexperience, and modelling appropriate attitudes and professional traits, they may become highly employable yet stillfail to secure graduate employment as a planner due to structural constraints beyond their control.