Social connectedness and graduate employability: exploring the professional networks of graduates from business and creative industries

Despite widespread recognition of the importance of social networks to career development and professional learning among experienced professionals and graduates alike, there is evidence to suggest that many students complete undergraduate programs with nascent networks at best, and little idea of how to develop and make use of the affordances of face-to-face and online connections for their careers. Drawing upon data from more than 600 surveys of graduates of Bachelor level programs in Creative Industries and Business fields from three Australian universities, this chapter: describes the professional networks of recent graduates; characterises their levels of social capital and benchmarks current graduate connectedness capability levels to identify opportunities for development in degree programs