How Knowledgeable and Prepared are New Zealand University Students?
Job hunting can be a very daunting process, especially for students or graduates looking for their first employment. During the course of their university study, students may be doing brilliantly academically in their chosen fields but may not have acquired skills to communicate effectively with prospective employers to enable them to secure a job. In this paper, I describe a study that aimed to find out how much university students knew about employment communication and how prepared they were to enter the competitive world of job hunting. A sample of 401 students at a New Zealand university was surveyed. The students, nearly two-thirds of whom intended to look for a job in the following six months, were asked to complete a 40-item questionnaire that addressed the three main components of the job search process: the résumé, the cover letter, and the interview. The findings suggest that students are far from equipped to manage employment communication effectively. Implications for curr
