Learning to Be Employable Through Volunteering: A Qualitative Study on the Development of Employability Capital of Young People.

Maria Luisa Giancaspro,Amelia Manuti

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.574232

Maria Luisa Giancaspro, Amelia Manuti

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.574232

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Abstract

Over the last decades, consistent research showed that voluntary work could be considered as a tool for professional development and concrete employment: volunteering could be either experienced as a desire to improve career opportunities or to acquire new skills. The study aimed to investigate voluntary work as a context of informal and non-formal workplace learning and vocational guidance, useful to develop skills and abilities, namely the capital of personal and social resources, that could promote future employability. Participants were 38 young volunteers who experienced the Universal Civil Service, a national Italian program addressed to young people aged up to 28 years, giving them both the opportunity to engage in social activities useful for the community and have the first contact with a working context. In line with the objectives of the study, participants were invited to describe their volunteering experience in a diary, highlighting if and to what extent this context contributed to enhancing their employability capital, namely the asset of skills, knowledge, and networks acquired, that they could transfer to a future professional domain. The narrative data collected were examined through diatextual analysis, a specific address of discourse analysis designed to catch the relationship between enunciators, text, and context of the talk. This qualitative analysis allowed us to investigate the meanings young people attributed to these activities. In light of these results, the paper contributed to investigate volunteers’ perceptions about the conditions that could best foster this specific kind of workplace informal and non-formal learning and at proposing a qualitative perspective on the analysis of the employability capital they developed.

Highlights

IntroductionThe labor market has profoundly changed: a globalized economy, the fluidity of markets, a need for continuous innovation, and the increase of competitiveness are only some of the main factors that are contributing to highlight an even more central role played by human capital as a strategic – even if often intangible – factor for development and organizational success (Manuti and De Palma, 2018; Manuti and Giancaspro, 2019).Learning to Be EmployableWithin this frame, people can make a difference for organizations if they possess technical skills and professional abilities but are smart, motivated, and eager to learn, possessing what the experts call “soft skills.” in a fast-moving scenario, like the one outlined above, workers are called to be flexible, adaptive, must deal with the unexpected, should be able to work both independently and in a group, and should be sociable, responsible, and capable of taking initiative (Khasanzyanova, 2017)
The main aim of the study was to investigate the participation of the Universal Civil Service as an experience of informal and non-formal workplace learning useful to develop an employability capital
The Civil Service is an experience that students and/or young graduates often chose before concretely entering the labor market; the study argued for the crucial role it could take as a context of vocational guidance, being useful to become more aware of the personal resources that will be strategic for future career management (Manuti, 2019)

Summary

Introduction

The labor market has profoundly changed: a globalized economy, the fluidity of markets, a need for continuous innovation, and the increase of competitiveness are only some of the main factors that are contributing to highlight an even more central role played by human capital as a strategic – even if often intangible – factor for development and organizational success (Manuti and De Palma, 2018; Manuti and Giancaspro, 2019).Learning to Be EmployableWithin this frame, people can make a difference for organizations if they possess technical skills and professional abilities but are smart, motivated, and eager to learn, possessing what the experts call “soft skills.” in a fast-moving scenario, like the one outlined above, workers are called to be flexible, adaptive, must deal with the unexpected, should be able to work both independently and in a group, and should be sociable, responsible, and capable of taking initiative (Khasanzyanova, 2017). The labor market has profoundly changed: a globalized economy, the fluidity of markets, a need for continuous innovation, and the increase of competitiveness are only some of the main factors that are contributing to highlight an even more central role played by human capital as a strategic – even if often intangible – factor for development and organizational success (Manuti and De Palma, 2018; Manuti and Giancaspro, 2019) Within this frame, people can make a difference for organizations if they possess technical skills and professional abilities but are smart, motivated, and eager to learn, possessing what the experts call “soft skills.”. In a fast-moving scenario, like the one outlined above, workers are called to be flexible, adaptive, must deal with the unexpected, should be able to work both independently and in a group, and should be sociable, responsible, and capable of taking initiative (Khasanzyanova, 2017) Those who possess these “soft skills” are frequently preferred over those who merely possess technical skills. The non-formal and informal dimensions of learning play a primary role in the development of future generations’ career success (Schugurensky, 2000; Turner, 2006; Tynjälä, 2008; Earley, 2009; Manuti et al, 2015; Marsick and Watkins, 2015)

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