The dissertation builds on Bourdieu's theory of the habitus and fields to argue that job-search strategies cannot be understood in isolation of their cultural context. It is to be expected, then, that strategies to finding or retaining a job are also adapted to the social context in which they are embedded. Based on a theoretically driven selection of variables, I identify two contrasting cultures that presumably account for cross-national variations: meritocratic, and the patrimonialistic market cultures. In Meritocratic cultures, job-seekers rely primarily on competitive methods such as direct job applications and public or private employment offices; meanwhile, in Patrimonialistic cultures, job-seekers practices are dominated by family and social ties. In the wider European context, I distinguish between a market-based meritocratic culture (i.e. the United Kingdom), a state-based meritocratic culture (i.e. the Netherlands) and a patrimonialistic culture (i.e. Spain). I explore contrasts in the university graduates's choices among fourteen different job-search strategies and employers' skill preferences, and analyze the degree of correspondence between the two in each national setting. The study relies on quantitative analysis of individual job-search strategies of university graduates collected from different sources. It examines original data collected between 2011 and 2013 at two major Spanish and Dutch universities and secondary data from the British DLHE survey (The Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education). On the employers’ side, I use data from the Flash Eurobarometer “Employers’ perception of graduate employability”, a telephone survey conducted in 2010, which provides reliable information on the skills that employers look for when recruiting higher education graduates. In addition to sampling both sides of the labor market, I explore the roles of institutional settings, labor policy traditions and the extension of the public and private services in the matching of job-seekers and employers in ...