Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse what retail and hospitality industry employers want from training and trainers. Design/methodology/approach: The research project was undertaken for Service Skills Australia, the Australian Industry Skills Council that oversees formal training for a range of service industries in…

This paper uses data from a recent national project on workforce development for vocational education and training (VET) practitioners in the service skills sector to examine the issue of teaching qualifications for VET practitioners in Australia. Data on the level of qualifications is limited and incomplete (Mlotkowski & Guthrie, 2010) and…

With the large number of high school students engaging in part-time work, very little is known about the impact of this activity on employability, employment outcomes and career development. This paper outlines the context of this phenomenon in Australia, and reviews the body of empirical work that has been published in recent years, noting the…

This research study attempts to determine how teenage workers develop their employability skills in their first formal jobs. Case studies were carried out in 12 Australian enterprises of varying sizes and drawn from different industry areas. In each case study the following staff were interviewed: senior managers and/or human resources management…