The impact of covid-19 on the self-perceived employability and career planning of commerce students at a selected university in South Africa

Abstract

Given how rapidly the world is changing daily, there is a great amount of pressure on higher education institutions to produce adequately skilled graduates in order to be employable. The overall objective of the study is to understand undergraduate Commerce students’ perception of employability during/after the COVID-19 pandemic. The study adopted the interpretive research paradigm, whereby the researcher used the exploratory design in order to collect the data. As a result, eleven (11) participants were chosen for the study by using the purposive sampling technique. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted to collect data for the study. In order to facilitate this, the researcher prepared an interview guide beforehand. The interview guide contained open-ended questions which allowed respondents to freely express themselves.