Competence-based employability: A Rasch analysis

Due to trends such as increasingly inter-organizational careers, the concept of employability is high on the agenda of employees, employers, and pol icy makers. To improve our understanding of this concept, we need to understand thoroughly its measurement. We performed a Rasch analysis of Van der Heijde and Van der Heijden's (2006) seminal employability scale to investigate the psychometric properties of the instrument based on a dataset of 167 Austrian employees. The results suggest that the five competences of Van der Heijde and Van der Heijden's (2006) employability scale n occupational expertise, anticipation and optimization, personal flexibility, corporate sense, and balance n vary in difficulty to agree with. The results suggest a progression of the competences of employability. This view has not been very strong in previous work. The potential interdependence of the dimensions of employability needs further discussion n it may be important to consider the employees' current "level" of employability. Empirical researchers need to consider the "level" of employability of the sample. Adding more difficult items to the existing scale will allow to better discriminate between employees of very high levels of employability.