THE INCREASE OF GRADUATES' EMPLOYMENT: A 360° APPROACH

In the current context of the dynamics and volatility of the global labor market, the employability of graduates of higher education is a key indicator of identifying the extent to which a university successfully fulfills its assumed mission - education. At the international level, the researchers have proposed different approaches to the concept of employability and have built different models to determine the components of the employability and the ways to increase it. The purpose of this paper is to present the most important models of employability and to introduce a new approach that extends the debates on this concept by involving all stakeholders - students, graduates, employers, university. The paper also identifies the role of the university in supporting the employability of the graduates and introduces a model of curricular development applied to reduce the gaps between the competences provided in the curriculum and those required on the labor market in order to increase the rapid insertion in the labor market of the graduates. The proposed model has been applied and validated within a project funded by the European Social Fund, generating significant results by redefining the practical competences and improving the practical training of the students from 8 degree programs.