How to improve Employability in Engineering students: a study about student career planning and perception of labor market

Socio-economic factors such as unemployment among young adults have influ-enced graduates’ perception of the labor market and their career planning. In this context,education plays a central role and in particular there is the need to understand which arethe most important soft skills and competences that universities should promote to en-hance employability among students. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to investigateengineering student perception of labor market and career planning. Data was collectedby means of a questionnaire administered to engineering students of the University ofPadova and analyzed by applying suitable machine learning models to investigate the re-lationship between student perception of the labor market and career planning, and someother factors, i.e. general information, self-perceived employability, career proactivity,and career control. Results of the analysis and their educational and social implicationsare presented and discussed.