Entrepreneurial Skills and Education‐Job Matching of Higher Education Graduates

This article studies entrepreneurial education and its impact on job‐skills matches for higher education graduates. Those who possess entrepreneurial skills are assumed to be more market aware and creative in their job search. They are also expected to foresee which job offers would and would not, match their skills. Using a large comparative survey (REFLEX‐HEGESCO) to test this hypothesis, we show that higher levels of entrepreneurial skills (defined as scanning and search, association and connection, and evaluation and judgement) reduce the probability of over‐education for university graduates in 18 OECD countries five years after graduation. Entrepreneurial education helps individuals to obtain better jobs, even if they search for wage employment and not for self‐employment. Resorting to a multilevel regression, our results indicate a stronger need for training in entrepreneurial skills at higher education institutions on the one hand, and the introduction of policies that promote innovation at the micro and macro levels in countries’ economy, on the other.