Higher education students in Finland and all over the world working a paid job alongside their studies. The reason for working is mostly financial but also gaining work experience (e.g. Holmes, 2008). Students understand the importance of gaining work experience and creating networks already during studies (Tuononen & Hyytinen, 2022), and thus they work alongside studies. Previous research has shown that any type of work experience can increase students’ employability and reduce the risk of unemployment (Passaretta & Triventi, 2015). In addition to work experience, transition to working life requires active career engagement already during university studies (Haase et al., 2012; Tuononen & Hyytinen, 2022). Career engagement includes, for example, career planning, identifying one’s own interests and recognising future job possibilities (Hirschi et al., 2014).

Working a paid job alongside studies means that students need to combine studying and working. This requires metacognitive awareness that refers to an ability to be aware of and specify one’s thinking about learning and an ability to plan and set learning goals, and to monitor their thoughts and actions to attain the goals (Schraw & Dennison, 1994; Kallio et al., 2018). Metacognitive awareness is commonly divided into two interrelated dimensions, knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition (Kallio et al., 2018; Schraw & Dennison, 1994; Tuononen et al., 2022). Knowledge about cognition enables students to be more aware of what they know, and what they are able to do, and how and when to use the knowledge and skills in different learning situations (Kallio et al., 2018). Regulation of cognitionis about planning, monitoring and evaluating one's thoughts, feelings and actions to attain one’s goals (Usher & Schunk, 2018). Therefore, metacognitive awareness is important for students to be able to monitor their studies and work alongside studies, as well as to see the relevance of work experience and to apply their learning to practice in work context.

Perceived relevance of work is subjective and can vary among students depending on their work and academic studies and career goals (Drewery et al., 2016; Nevison et al., 2017). For example, students have perceived greater relevance of work if the work offers appropriate challenges and if they work in a field in which they are aiming to work in the future (Drewery & Pretti, 2021). In addition, many studies of perceived relevance of work have been conducted in Australia, Canada, and the USA (e.g. Drewery, & Pretti, 2021; Stringer & Kerpelman, 2010). Furthermore, these studies explored the relevance of work in internships or work-integrated learning (WIL) contexts. Therefore, there is a need for research exploring perceived relevance of paid jobs in Scandinavia. In addition, it is important to explore humanities students' perceptions of the relevance of work experience and how it is related to their career engagement and metacognitive awareness.

The present study aims to explore how humanities Master’s students’ work experience of paid jobs is related to career engagement and metacognitive awareness. Research questions are: 1) How is students’ employment status related to their career engagement and metacognitive awareness?, 2)  How are the amount and nature of work related to career engagement and metacognitive awareness?, 3) How is the experienced relevance of work related to the nature of work, career engagement and metacognitive awareness? With this information, higher education institutions can support students to take better advantage of their work experience and develop their career engagement and metacognitive awareness which in turn help them later in their transition to working life.

A total of 302 Master’s students, who were at the same level of their studies, participated in the study by filling the questionnaire. Response rate varied from 9% to 36% between the degree programmes (mean was 23%). The questionnaire included questions of work experience, career engagement and metacognitive awareness. Students’ employment status was measured by asking whether she/he has worked during studies and how many hours per week they have worked in the past year. Nature of work was measured by the item “My work is related to my field of study” on a 5-point Likert scale. It was recoded as a categorical variable so that totally agree and agree were combined as indicating having work experience in one’s own study field and totally disagree and disagree indicating no study related work experience. In addition, the questionnaire included two questions relating to the relevance of work: 1) ”The requirement level of my current job corresponds to my university education” and 2) “I can utilise things I have learnt at the university in my current job”. Items are measured on a 5-point Likert format scale (1 =completely disagree, 5 =completely agree). The items were modified based on the previous study (Tuononen, Parpala & Lindblom-Ylänne, 2019). Students’ metacognitive awareness was measured using a shortened version of the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI, Schraw & Dennison, 1994; Harrison & Vallin, 2018; Kallio et al., 2018; Kallio et al., 2017; Tuononen et al., 2022). The instrument measures two major components of metacognitive awareness: 1) knowledge about cognition and 2) regulation of cognition. A 5-point Likert scale (1 = totally disagree, and 5 = totally agree) was used to measure metacognitive awareness. Career Engagement was measured by seven items including career planning, career self-exploration, environmental career exploration, networking, skill development and positioning behaviour which is a shortened version of Career Engagement Scale (Hirschi, Freund & Herrmann, 2014). Items are measured on a 5-point Likert scale. First, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to the items measuring metacognitive awareness and career engagement. The relationships between the constructs were analysed using Pearson correlations, independent samples t-test and One-Way ANOVA. The effect sizes were calculated using Cohen’s d. Analyses were conducted with SPSS and Amos 28.

The results showed that students working a paid job had higher scores on networking than non-working students. There was no difference in metacognitive awareness between working and non-working students. When, the amount of working hours was taken into account, the results showed that there were significant differences in career engagement as well as metacognitive awareness. Students who worked more than 35h per week had higher scores on networking compared to the students who worked less than 20 hours. Similarly, students with 35 hours work had significantly higher scores on knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition than students working less than 35 h per week. The results showed that the nature of work was related to both dimensions of career engagement, but it was not related to metacognitive awareness. The results also revealed that students who had work experience related to their study field experienced that their level of work corresponds better to their education and that they can utilise their studies at work more than students who had no work experience related to field of study. The results showed that perceived relevance of work was related to career planning and networking as well as knowledge about cognition. This indicates that students who evaluated that their work has relevance were more aware of their learning, they perceive that they can utilise things that they have learned at university, and they have also had more career planning and networking activities during the last six months. The present study indicates that students' working can enhance students’ career engagement and their metacognitive awareness. Study also revealed that the amount and nature of work matter in terms of whether work experience was related to career engagement, metacognitive awareness, and perceived work relevance.

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