The global expansion of higher education has facilitated a structural decoupling between academic credentials and labour market entry (Marginson, 2016). In this era of credential massification, recruitment is no longer a simple search for skills but a response to informational noise caused by the ubiquity of university degrees (Tomlinson, 2012). This phenomenon diminishes the traditional capacity of credentials to signal individual capability, leading to heightened evaluative uncertainty for recruiters. While existing literature often examines employability as an individual possession of attributes, this approach frequently overlooks the decisive role of organisational appraisal as the fundamental mechanism for allocating market opportunities (Rivera, 2012; Tholen, 2015). This research argues that employability is not an inherent quality owned by the individual but a situated relational construct awarded through organisational valuation. Adopting an employer perspective is an analytical imperative because recruiters act as the primary gatekeepers whose evaluative judgements determine the legitimacy of individual merit.

Previously, studies adopting an employer perspective have moved beyond human capital models to recognise credentials as screening devices for trainability and cultural alignment (Rivera, 2012). While these studies identified elite credentials as institutional proxies to manage applicant volume and candidate dispositions, they often focus on the static outcomes of these filters. This creates a critical research gap as existing literature fails to explain the dynamic and interpretive mechanisms through which employers navigate selection when primary signals lose their differentiating utility. This research investigates the active and interpretive processes of valuation through which organisations reconstruct employability as a negotiated construct. This offers insights into how organisational evaluative frameworks function as interpretive mechanisms that redefine the perceived value of higher education within the labour market (Brown, 2017).

The contemporary Chinese graduate labour market provides a critical empirical site for this investigation. China serves as a magnifying glass for systemic tensions arising from the erosion of traditional meritocratic benchmarks (Mok & Jiang, 2018). In this context, the abundance of elite degrees renders academic signals indistinguishable, forcing employers to navigate significant evaluative ambiguity. These conditions provide essential insights for European scholars observing similar credential saturation under the Bologna Process. By examining China as a precursory case of extreme market congestion, this study offers a comparative lens to understand how organisational recruitment logic evolves when educational hierarchies no longer guarantee informational clarity.

The research investigates three interrelated questions:

1. What types of supplementary signals do organisations rely upon to construct graduate employability once academic credentials reach a point of diminishing informational returns?

2. How are these signals interpreted and prioritised as evaluative indicators to differentiate candidates within highly homogeneous pools?

3. How do organisational contexts and evaluative frameworks shape and legitimise the employer’s construction of graduate employability as a situated relational construct?

This study seeks to extend classical signalling theory (Spence, 1973) to address its limitations in high-saturation markets. The original signalling theory assumes that signal costs effectively distinguish between different levels of ability. However, this mechanism of differentiation collapses under massification as informational clarity is compromised by the ubiquity of high-cost signals. Consequently, there is a theoretical need to explain how selection persists during informational attenuation. By integrating the culture of choice (Schwarz, 2018), the study conceptualises recruitment as a culturally mediated practice involving a layered repertoire of signals. Academic credentials function as primary risk-management filters. In response to credential homogeneity, recruiters utilise non-academic indicators to resolve evaluative ambiguity. From this perspective, signal weight emerges from an interpretive process that balances organisational priorities with shared cultural norms. This evaluative dynamic redefines employability as a contingent outcome of organisational valuation.

This study adopts an interpretivist qualitative research design to examine how graduate employability is constructed through employers’ recruitment practices in China. An interpretive approach is appropriate as the research focuses on the subjective judgements and justifications that employers utilise to navigate evaluative uncertainty under conditions of credential saturation (Brown et al., 2003). Data were generated through 30 semi-structured interviews with key actors involved in graduate recruitment. This group included HR officers, HR directors, department heads and CEOs of start-up firms. This range of roles facilitates access to multiple organisational perspectives and captures both formal screening criteria and informal evaluative norms. Interviewees were drawn from organisations across thirteen sectors and five ownership types (state-owned, private, foreign-invested, mixed-ownership and special general partnership firms). The sample also covers three organisational size categories based on employee count. All organisations are located in major urban labour markets in China where graduate competition is particularly intense. This diverse sampling frame ensures the study captures how evaluative frameworks vary across different organisational cultures. The interviews lasted between 60 and 90 minutes and were designed to elicit detailed accounts of how employers interpret and weigh layered signals. These signals range from academic credentials to internship prestige and personal attributes. This method allowed participants to articulate the underlying logic of why certain signals become decisive during specific selection stages. Following ethical guidelines, all participants provided informed consent and data were fully anonymised. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using a hybrid inductive-deductive thematic approach (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). While the analysis was initially informed by signalling theory, inductive coding was essential to capture context-specific practices and cultural justifications. This analytic strategy facilitates a systematic examination of how signals are contextually prioritised. It provides a robust empirical basis for conceptualising employability as an interpretive and evaluative outcome of organisational appraisal logic.

Preliminary analysis identifies three patterns in how graduate employability is constructed through layered signal valuation in China. First, formal credentials function as a primary layer of risk management (negative screening). In a saturated market, university prestige acts as a structural filter to manage applicant volume. While these academic signals are mandatory for initial access, their value is limited to establishing institutional eligibility. Once this threshold is met, the signalling efficacy of credentials diminishes, necessitating a shift to supplementary layers to resolve candidate homogeneity. Second, employers navigate uncertainty by prioritising value-laden signals to differentiate candidates. Indicators such as internship prestige and communicative performance are reinterpreted through a cultural lens as proxies for organisational fit. In this process, employability is reconstructed as a situated relational construct. It is an evaluative outcome awarded to candidates whose non-academic signals justify them as the most reliable and culturally aligned choice for the firm. Finally, signal weighting is context-dependent and institutionally justified. Recruitment practices are shaped by internal factors such as organisational governance and shared evaluative frameworks. Employers develop collective understandings of merit to ensure their selections are defensible and professional. Graduate employability thus emerges as a situational outcome awarded through organisational appraisal logic. In conclusion, the study finds that the transition from higher education to work is mediated by the organisational construction of merit. These findings offer a constructive dialogue with the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), suggesting that the Skills Agenda could benefit from considering the socio-cultural mediation inherent in organisational appraisal logic. When the culture of choice dominates selection, the capacity of organisations to define and identify value-laden signals becomes a decisive factor in labour market outcomes. This highlights how organisational evaluative frameworks may inadvertently shape social opportunities, as the construction of merit becomes increasingly intertwined with symbolic markers that extend beyond formal education.

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