Work-related attitudes in higher education graduates

Along with discipline-specific skills, soft skills are an important part of a person’s employability. But do a person’s attitudes towards work not play a considerable role as well? This pilot study explains why work-related attitudes, such as desire to achieve, willingness to learn, or a positive self esteem, are an equally important part of employability as the much-discussed soft skills are. It then sets out to investigate by means of semi-structured interviews in which ways, if at all, a range of work-related attitudes in young higher education graduates are influenced by their first work experience. Finally, the research outcomes are discussed and corresponding hypotheses, which are to be empirically tested by future researchers, are presented.