Creative Commons

Aim - Employability is one of the areas of the strategy 2020 which was recently released by the European Commission. It is getting a lot of attention nowadays because of the changes that are taking place in the labor market. These changes are creating new jobs that require new skills. Students are one important target group for these changes. It is, therefore, crucial for the students to be equipped with well-developed employability skills. Together with the educational institutions, NGO‟s for education are also working for a better enhancement of the employability skills among students and young graduates. Junior Achievement Young Enterprise is Europe‟s largest provider of entrepreneurship education and recognized by the European Commission Enterprise Directorate General as a „Best Practice in Entrepreneurship Education‟. The focus of the present research paper is on the employability skills that student possess, their level of work readiness and, also, their attitude towards entrepreneurship Methodology - A survey is carried out among 155 students, all former participants in the Graduate Program delivered by Junior Achievement Young Enterprise Europe. The analyzed sample is comprised by students coming from six European countries (Romania, Portugal, Spain, Norway, Denmark and The Netherlands). Findings - The main finding of the research indicates that there is a positive and strong relationship between students‟ work readiness and the influence of the experiences „School” and „Graduate Program”. The results present the two experiences as important factors of the level of work readiness, which is a proxy of employability. Regarding the possibility of becoming an entrepreneur students‟ find „fear of failure” and lack of „a product/service idea” as the most important obstacles in their achievement. The personal characteristics of the analyzed sample, such as gender do no change the importance and order of these two barriers. However, differences of perception may be identified between the age groups, and this could be a good topic for further research. The current findings are based completely on the perceptions of participants in the „Graduate Program”. The findings of the current paper can be used in future studies, in order to gain deeper knowledge in the field and to have a contribution to the existing academic literature in this area