Greater attention than ever is being placed on how universities enable their graduates to achieve their career goals as a key return on significant private and public investment. Scholars in two distinct fields of research have explored the characteristics and conditions that promote or constrain graduates’ career success: graduate employability and career development. In this article, we present visualisations of direct citation networks among 4068 journal articles focused on graduate employability and career development and consider the disciplinary landscapes that they reveal. Our findings show that despite a clear alignment of research concerns and educational goals, there has been limited theoretical or practical exchange between the two fields. We argue that purposeful exchange between the two fields will enrich both and, when applied to practice, could inform an evidence-based, integrative pedagogy of careers and employability learning in higher education.

This paper overviews the qualitative research method of autoethnography and its relevance to research in vocational psychology and practice in career development. Autoethnography is a reflexive means by which the researcher-practitioner consciously embeds himself or herself in theory and practice, and by way of intimate autobiographic account, explicates a phenomenon under investigation or intervention. Autoethnography is presented as a vehicle to operationalise social constructionist research and practice that aims to establish trustworthiness and authenticity. Furthermore, the method is presented as a means to operationalise the notion of critical consciousness within researchers and practitioners. It is concluded that autoethnography should be admitted to the methodological repertoire of vocational psychology research and practice.