the Graduate Identity Approach
This website presents a viable alternative to the conventional, currently-dominant
'skills and attributes' approach to graduate employability. The approach
presented here is termed the 'Graduate Identity Approach', and
is based on the research and practical experience of Leonard Holmes, who
has worked, researched and taught in the employment and education field
for over 30 years.
The website aims to:
a) critique the conventional skills and attributes approach to graduate
b) present the theory and practical implications of the model of practices
& emergent identity for issues of graduate employability;
c) provide resources for practical implementation of the Graduate Identity
The Graduate Identity approach is based on a Relational
Perspective on Learning and Skill, which emphasises the need to attend
to the social processes by which what is taken to be learning and
competent performance are construed. This is to be contrasted with what
may referred to as a possessive-instrumentalist perspective, which
assumes that skills (sometimes called 'capabilities', 'competencies' etc)
are empirically real, that they can be acquired and possessed and
are used to perform the behaviour required by graduates in employment.
In contrast, rather than taking 'competencies', 'capabilities', 'skills',
'attributes', 'qualities' etc (whether called 'transferable', 'generic',
'key' etc) as objective characteristics and/ or properties of individuals,
the Relational Perspective examines how such attributions arise
in relation to the social practices within particular arenas, and the
emergent identities of persons whose performance is being considered.
The Graduate Identity approach draws upon various traditions within philosophy,
sociology and psychology that address human behaviour as being in principle
not amenable to objective specification but, rather, as requiring attention
to the social meaningfulness of situated action. Empirical research, already
undertaken and currently being conducted, explores how students/ graduates
and employers understand the nature of 'employability' for graduates,
ie what it means to be 'worthy of employment', and how this affects their
own actions in the arena of graduate recruitment and employment. The key
- How can and do individuals who have been awarded degrees (and so are
formally graduates) gain social recognition of this,
especially in terms of the kinds of jobs they obtain and the way in
which their performance in such jobs is interpreted and assessed?
- How do employers interpret the performance expected of employees who
have degrees, as being distinctive of graduates?
- How do the various parties to the construction of the 'graduate identity'
negotiate the meaning of this, in the social contexts in which they
- How are the answers to the above changing in the context of changes
in HE participation rates, and in the graduate labour market?
Publications and working papers
Website managed by:
Reader in Management
School of Business and Social Sciences
page last updated: 23rd March 2009