The Role of Faculty Members on Finding Job Process for Graduates: a qualitative research

Finding Job is defined as a pattern of voluntary, purposeful, self-regulating behaviors aiming at achieving employment. This concept is influenced by various factors and predictors among which the role of social support has been examined in various research. Concerning the important role of universities faculty members on the improvement of career path and students’ job search process, as an especial, current research aims at examining the perception of the university graduates on how professors influence their job search process. With regard to the current research nature, this research is a qualitative one with the interpretative phenomenological design. Participants consist of 11 individuals (7 males and 4 females) among graduates of Bojnord University whose, besides employment, scores on job search activity and job search self-efficacy scales are one standard deviation higher than mean. The participants were selected by purposeful and criterion- driven sampling method. Then, data were collected by a semi-structural interview and were coded and analyzed by Dicklman method. The coding process was analyzed in the form of primary codes, concepts, and categories. The results of the interviews’ analysis led to extracting 440 primary codes, 11 concepts, and 5 categories. These categories, which are indeed reflective of perception of the graduates on how professors influence their job search process, are fostering job search self-efficacy, psychological support, specialized support, nurturing job search attitude, and improving job search strategies. Factors counted from interviews’ analysis process while emphasizing the role of faculty members on the graduates’ job search process, is suggestive of the fact that the relationship between faculty members and students contains implications such as improvement of realistic attitudes toward job search, increase of perceived social support toward job search, an increase of background capabilities for employment, enriching job search strategies and increase of belief in individual capabilities to achieve a job.