Career Preparation and Employability Readiness among Final-Year Students in Zhejiang, China: A Descriptive Survey

Abstract

Abstract

Career preparation has become a central responsibility of higher education, yet many employability studies move quickly from broad conceptual models to predictive mechanisms. This article takes a narrower and more descriptive route. It extracts a non-overlapping sub-study from a doctoral survey on graduate employability and asks what the career readiness profile of final-year students looks like in a digitally developed region of China. Using survey data from 521 final-year students in Zhejiang Province, the paper describes students' institutional background, field of study, job-search participation, access to digital tools, and self-rated readiness indicators. The results show that career activity was high: 72.55% of respondents were already applying for jobs or attending career fairs, and a further 8.25% planned to do so within three months. However, access to digital tools and internet connectivity was uneven, with 56.05% rating their access as fair, poor, or very poor. Mean scores for cognitive competencies, social competencies, behavioural competencies, digital literacy, resilience, and perceived employability were all above the scale midpoint, but resilience had the lowest mean score (M = 3.540, SD = 1.030), followed by digital literacy (M = 3.666, SD = 0.980). These findings suggest that active job seeking should not be equated with full employability readiness. For ordinary career education practice, universities should combine career events with targeted support for digital access, digital confidence, and psychological readiness.