MALAYSIAN GRADUATES' EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS

The main aim of this study was to identify the perception of employers concerning the employability skills needed in the job market and graduates’ perception of the employability skills that they currently possessed. Eleven variables that make up employability skills based on past research were examined in this study. However, only seven factors, which were the result of factor analysis, were considered. Data were collected through two different sets of questionnaires intended to gauge employers’ and graduates’ perceptions, respectively. The results of this study revealed that employers preferred to hire graduates from public universities. Moreover, graduates and employers placed similar importance in terms of the ranking of employability skills, where both employers and graduates perceived the order of importance of employability skills to be the same. However, there was a difference between employers’ and graduates’ perceptions for all seven employability factors, where employers rated graduates much lower in terms of mean rank. The results of this study also suggest that younger employers tend to be more favourable to graduates’ employability skills. The higher the job position of the employer within the organization, the higher are the expectations of graduates. Finally, recommendations were also included in this study.

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