Mentoring for student reflection and employability competences: A pre-test post-test study

Given the dynamic and fast-evolving labour market, developing students’ employability competences has become of utmost importance for higher education institutions. To develop these competences, the ability to reflect is essential, as it helps students to identify their learning needs and make plans for further development. However, reflective abilities are not easy to acquire and students need guidance to help them reflect. Therefore, mentoring is often used as an instructional approach to stimulate students to reflect. When looking at prior research, empirical evidence on the relationship between mentoring and employability competences is scarce, and especially the mediating role of reflection has rarely been researched. Consequently, this quasi-experimental study researched this mediating relationship by employing a pretest-posttest design. Data were collected at four similar mentoring programs in higher education within the Netherlands and Belgium (n = 160). The path analysis demonstrated that, first, trust and availability, autonomy support and empathy significantly increased students’ employability competences. Second, it was found that autonomy support and similarity stimulated students’ critical reflection significantly. Third, critical reflection significantly influenced students’ employability competences. Last, it was found that reflection partially mediated the relationship between mentoring (autonomy support and similarity) and employability. These results demonstrate that mentoring programs in higher education enable students to develop their reflective abilities and, in turn, their employability competences. Furthermore, it provides mentoring program directors and mentors with concrete guidelines on which mentor support types (trust and availability, autonomy support, similarity, and empathy) are most effective for developing students’ reflective abilities and employability competences.