Employability skills support vocational school students’ careers and work readiness Career support is in the form of integrating work skills into vocational learning. ^{1, 2} Factors that influence students’ low employability skills include teachers’ inability to innovate and design meaningful vocational learning. Students’ employability skills have not been able to produce graduates who are ready to work and globally competitive. ³ Empowering employability skills can help students solve problems, adapt to the environment, cultivate social attitudes, Information Technology (IT) skills, language literacy, personal abilities, self-leadership skills, and communication skills. ^{4, 5} Employability skills are an important requirement before graduating from vocational school so that they are ready to compete in the world of work. ^{6, 7}

The importance of Employability Skills as skills that enable students to get a job after graduating includes personal and interpersonal skills, attitudes, habits, and behavior. Multifactorial problems originating from students, teachers, and the vocational education system in Indonesia influence students’ low employability. The Merdeka Curriculum for vocational schools in intracurricular learning is divided into general and vocational groups. The learning process is still theoretical and does not fully integrate work skills. The world of work requires vocational school graduates to be competent and professional, but employability skills have not been fully realized and developed in vocational learning.

The problem of unemployment in Indonesia, based on records from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), shows that the number of open unemployed nationally in February 2024 will reach 7.2 million people. Unemployment data for vocational school graduates in the last 3 years is 11.13 million people (2021); 9.42 million people (2022); and 9.31 million people (2024). Unemployment data was also confirmed through the vocational school alumni tracker in Wonosobo Regency, showing that 43% of vocational school graduates have worked according to their competencies, and the remaining 67% of vocational school graduates are not ready to compete and have work skills. High unemployment rates in developing countries are not only resolved with an economic approach but must be balanced with increased competence according to industry needs. ^{8, 9} Vocational schools, as educational institutions, must be able to prepare graduates for the world of work and industry (DUDI) by professionally mastering technology and soft skills. ¹⁰ A comparison of international and national research on vocational learning revealed differences in job skills. In general, Indonesia has only curriculum content and targeted material, as proven in the national assessment; concept understanding tests are still prioritized, not work skill readiness.

Employability skills in vocational learning can help develop appropriate learning strategies to equip graduates. Students can acquire knowledge that is directly related to real life (contextual), utilizing the environment, and reconstructing traditions, culture, and local potential, which can be used as a source of meaningful learning. A vocational learning approach based on local wisdom can be used to reconstruct a community’s original science into scientific knowledge through work skills. The core competency of vocational graduates is their employability. The more complex the learning resources in society, the more opportunities there are to develop vocational school students’ employability skills. Work-ready competencies are very important to develop by understanding students’ employability skills. The problem of employability skills is very complex in analyzing dominant factors, so the research objectives are to analyze research trends in the employability skills of vocational school students and factors that influence the employability skills of vocational school students.

The literature review used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) systematic review approach ( Figure 1). ¹¹ Research limitations used the keywords “employability skills” AND “vocational school students.” Data sources were based on articles published and indexed by Google Scholar, Scopus, Science Direct, Web of science in 2020-2024 (last five years), and then analyzed using the VOSviewer application. The data search was conducted from October 25 to October 31, 2024. Eligibility criteria were determined by determining inclusion and exclusion using the PESTLE Analysis are presented in Table 1.

This study only uses English-language journals and does not take data from books, proceedings, erratum, and others.

In the journal selection process, the researcher invited three authors to review the articles obtained; if there was a discrepancy in determining the article based on the criteria, the solution was to invite another reviewer or expert to help solve the problem.

Identification begins with a search of Google Scholar, Scopus, Science Direct, and Web of Science databases. Before the screening process, a duplication check was carried out. Next, title and abstract screening was carried out. Articles meeting the inclusion criteria will be checked for full text.

The screening process uses automatic tools, namely rayan.ai, which aims to help screen and analyze the articles found.

Journal grouping was based on the criteria for the most dominant employability skills determinants of each article.

Information on the determinants of vocational high school students’ employability skills is still considered to provide insufficient information, which is done by reviewing other references in the form of vocational high school curriculum policies related to indicators of graduate success.

The search resulted in 980 articles from the Google Scholar database and 36 articles from Scopus, Science Direct, and Web of Science. The initial stage is to remove duplicate data, non-article data such as books, proceedings, book chapters, data that are not in English, and the year of publication before 2020 (N = 820). After the filtering stage, 196 articles remained. The filtering stage removed non-full-text article data, not at the vocational school level, and did not include the inclusion criteria (N = 76). A total of 115 articles were included in the filtering stage. Furthermore, based on the eligibility of articles on factors that influence the work skills of vocational high school students, keywords, article titles, and meeting the eligibility criteria for review, 39 articles were produced.

The results of the systematic review show Employability Skills as a solution for training students in scientific work and being directly involved in the vocational learning process and producing products. Vocational learning activities to develop work skills that are not focused on one solution to the problems they face but have many alternative answers to solve problems based on work skills indicators. The importance of workability in vocational learning, the potential for workability, the factors that influence it, and the relationship between workability components and other indicators. The publication data findings for the last five years (2020-2024) for research trends are presented in Table 2.

Table 2 PRISMA analysis results totaling 39 articles in reputable international journal categories indexed by Scopus and Google Scholar based on research inclusion criteria. Employability Skills research trends based on year of publication in the last 5 years are presented in Figure 2.

Figure 2 shows that the publication trend over the last five years has fluctuated because of the many needs for employability skills that are considered necessary to prepare work-ready graduates and adapt to global needs. By 2023, there will be a significant decrease compared to the previous year. Publications indexed by Scopus and Google Scholar are presented in Figure 3.

Figure 3 shows international journal publications indexed by Scopus and Google Scholar based on research inclusion criteria to maintain the validity and authenticity of the data sources. A reputable international journal determined that the results and quality of the research can be accounted for by research ethics. The screening data after identifying the publications are shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4 data screening shows several duplicate publications, the type of publication is not in a journal, and does not match the inclusion and scope of the research. In 2021, the most publications were 69 indexed by Google Scholar and in 2020 there were 59 articles indexed by Scopus. The next step in determining research data inclusion is presented in Figure 5.

The research inclusions in Figure 5 show data that are in accordance with the research objectives, so that these data determine the results of the PRISMA analysis. 2021 received the most inclusion data compared with the other years. The overall distribution of data at each stage is shown in Figure 6.

The distribution of the PRISMA data in Figure 6 shows the consistency and reliability of the objective data. Based on the data from the identification process up to the inclusion data, the numbers became smaller, meaning that step-by-step has been carried out according to research principles. Trends in employability skills research using the VOSviewer application with keywords for the last five years (2020-2024) based on Publish or Perish searches are presented in Figure 7.

The visualization results in Figure 7 of the research trends for the last five years are vocational education, training, acquisition, and employment skills, which are shown in the largest circle. The color in each visualization shows the same cluster in the study. The closer the distance between studies, the stronger the connection, and the stronger the citations between journals are represented by lines. Vocational education does not fully refer to employment skills and is more dominant in technological vocational education training; therefore, it is necessary to further study employability skills factors. Furthermore, Vocational school students do not yet have a research network connection with employability skills, meaning that this study has a high degree of novelty. Next, the influencing factors (FI) to map the largest determining factors that can be used as indicators of employability skills are presented in Table 3.

Table 3 includes data from 39 scientific articles indexed using Google Scholar and Scopus. Over the last five years (2020-2024) there have been 80 factors determining employability skills sourced from Google Scholar indexed journals and 16 employability skills factors sourced from Scopus indexed journals; thus, a total of 96 determining factors are presented in Figure 8.

There were 96 determining factors resulting from a literature review using PRISMA based on the percentage of all existing factors, so dominant contribution mapping was carried out using six indicators of determining factors. The results for the six employability skill indicators are presented in Table 4.

Table 4 shows 39 articles, 17 of which originated from Indonesia and 22 from outside Indonesia (international). Table 5 presents trends in vocational learning research that examine global employability skills from international sources.

Table 5 shows research trends based on country of origin for 14 countries in the last 5 years. In international research (56%) and Indonesia (44%). Furthermore, in Figure 8 there are 41 factors determining employability skills which come from global research and the 3 largest employability skills factors are self-confidence, adaptability, and communication skills. Research on employability skills in Indonesia is broadly explained based on Table 6.

Table 6 shows 55 work skill factors in Indonesia. Next, to identify the most dominant factors, there are 3 work skill factors, namely communication skills, creativity, and critical thinking skills, presented in Figure 9.

The data revealed differences in work skill factors in vocational learning internationally and in Indonesia. The most dominant determining factors differ internationally: first, self-confidence equips individuals with confidence and self-confidence in completing tasks or goals; second, adaptability is used to adjust to new conditions in the work environment; third, communication skills equip students with how to communicate effectively as a form of interaction skills with colleagues and teams. According to research on employability skills in Indonesia, the biggest determining factors are communication skills and creativity, which are used to produce new ideas and work. The biggest factors found both internationally and nationally relate to 21st-century skill needs.

Factors that influence employability skills in vocational learning are oriented towards developing individual students’ skills comprehensively. The work skills aspect is important as a reference for researchers to analyze the factors that influence it. Based on these findings, skills, attitudes, and understanding of employability skills become a single unit that influences each other based on hard and soft skills. Student understanding can help complete work well, while skills need students to develop in the workplace with the ability to interact positively with other people, and attitudes determine how to work and determine an individual’s self-orientation to develop, grow, and have a good future. The aspects of vocational school students’ work readiness and their relevance in the integration of vocational learning were reconstructed based on the literature review presented in Figure 10.

The research results show that the employability skills of vocational students have experienced a fluctuating trend over the last five years (2020-2024) have experienced a fluctuating trend. The problem of increasingly complex job skills needs is that we must be able to adapt to developments over time and the flow of globalization, so that the needs of vocational graduates are also increasingly changing. Based on a systematic review, 96 factors influenced work skills. There are 6 (six) most dominant determinants of employability skills: creativity (FI_1), communication skills (FI_2), adaptability (FI_3), problem-solving (FI_4), critical thinking skills (FI_5), and self-confidence (FI_6). Vocational learning requires management and meaningful learning. Internationally, the most dominant determinants of work skills are self-confidence, adaptability, and communication skills, whereas in Indonesia, the dominant work skill factors are communication skills and creativity. The research contribution to the employability skills factor is the consideration of six determining factors that can be used as qualifications for graduates in contextual and meaningful vocational learning.