Extra-curricular engagement as a driver of the development of transferable skills and perceived employability: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

This article examines the academic literature on extra-curricular engagement, soft skills and perceived employability through a bibliometric approach. Against a backdrop of changing labour market expectations and growing pressure on higher education institutions to produce work-ready graduates, the study aims to identify the main research trends, influential actors and thematic structures related to these concepts. The analysis is based on a corpus of 107 open-access articles indexed in Scopus between 2020 and 2026 and analysed using VOSviewer. The results show a growing scientific interest in this topic, particularly between 2022 and 2025. They also reveal that the field is structured around several thematic clusters, with employability emerging as the central concept, closely linked to higher education, perceived employability, extracurricular activities and soft skills. Furthermore, the results highlight a relatively fragmented network of authors as well as a moderate level of international collaboration. Overall, the study confirms that extra-curricular engagement is increasingly regarded in the literature as a potential lever for developing transferable skills and enhancing perceived employability, although these relationships remain embedded within a broader and still fragmented field of research. This article thus helps to clarify the intellectual structure of this field and suggests avenues for future research into the role of para-university experiences in graduates’ employability.

Keywords: Para-university engagement; cross-disciplinary skills; perceived employability; higher education; bibliometric analysis; VOSviewer.

Received Date: February 22, 2026

Accepted Date: March 14, 2026

Published Date: April 02, 2026

Available Online at: https://www.ijsrisjournal.com/index.php/ojsfiles/article/view/769