The Role of Social Media in Addressing Employability Challenges Faced By Graduates in South Africa.

South Africa is one of the countries with high unemployment rate and numerous job creation strategies have been implemented but the latter remains. Although South Africa is perceived to be geared up and ready for industrial change, but the country is still engulfed with persistent high unemployment rate which is exacerbated by the growing number of graduates exiting the tertiary sector. Therefore, there is a need for strategies that enhance the integration of the unemployed, especially graduates, into the labor market. Graduates have scant knowledge to effectively use social media as an employability tool. This shows that graduates need to gain the competence in skills needed to find job opportunities. Using social media for personal reasons by students has to change and start using it as a marketing utility tool for their skills and abilities. Social media has been identified as a solution to employment challenges faced by graduates. The Industrial Revolution(IR) on the other hand is envisaged to be bringing more job losses since there will be machinery take-over in production processes. This brings another perspective in the context of South Africa and its current unemployment stubbornness as well as the intact poverty in most families. It is therefore necessary to use some technologies brought by the IR for our benefit, hence the aim of the study is to explore the role of social media in addressing employability challenges faced by graduates. The study will employ the CareerEDGE framework which defines the concepts that influence the employability of the youth cohort. It is a clear practical model that serves as a useful framework for working with students to develop their employability. The power of CareerEDGE rests on its effortlessness because it can be explained to graduates with ease.

Key words: employability, social media, graduates, Industrial Revolution (IR)