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This paper reflects the experience of recruitment graduate engineers from Ranhill’s 10 active subsidiaries of various sectors ranging from infrastructure, utilities, energy, power, water, oil and gas, environment to overseas ventures based on the survey and interview rating data. This survey reported which skills employers value most highly among graduate engineers and measures satisfaction ratings on how far graduate engineers demonstrate these capabilities. The four main generic employability profiles (skills and capabilities) of graduate engineers described in this paper are academic (academic performance, college and job experiences); personal management (positive attitudes, responsibility, and adaptability); connectivity (communication, IT (information technology), team work, and commercial awareness); and exploration skills (imaginative, innovative, and creative). Gap analysis(importance rank–satisfaction rank) out of 10 scales showed that the satisfaction gaps ranged from -1.5 to 5 and the largest gap was connectivity skills. The findings illustrate that universities need to equip graduates engineers with excel intellectual capabilities and applied practical skills which make them more “work ready”.
Keywords: employability, graduates, employer perspective
Introduction
This study was conducted in Ranhill, one of the Malaysia’s most successful premier engineering and construction corporation. Ranhill provides total engineering and construction solutions to a wide range of industries, from the initial conceptual studies right through to detailed engineering, construction, and commissioning. Ranhill’s principal activities are EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction); EPCMS(engineering, procurement, and construction management services); PMS (project management services); and O&M (operations and maintenance). Today, Ranhill have established an international presence, undertaking projects in South Asia, ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), the Middle East, Africa, and China.
For the past 54 years, Ranhill’s successes in the business are the results of quality graduate engineers and other professionals employed to the company. These engineers and other professionals have displayed the highest level of professionalism and dedication to deliver results. This statement is reported by the president of Ranhill(Annual Report, 2009), who has played a major role in Ranhill successful year under review, and he is proud to be at the helm of such a competent and committed workforce. Every year, thousands of graduate engineers produced by the public and private university and hundreds of graduated engineers are recruited as employee for this company. Employability skills are not only job specific, but are skills which cut horizontally across all industries and vertically across all jobs from entry level to chief executive officer (Graduate employability, Winter 2008/2009).
Statement of the Problem
Employability skills are defined as skills required not only to gain employment, but also to progress within an enterprise, so as to achieve one’s potential and successfully contribute to enterprise strategic directions. Employability also can be understood as the individual, who has a set of skills, knowledge, understanding, and personal attributes that make the person more likely to choose a secure occupation, in which they can be satisfied and successful (Dacre Pool & Sewell, 2007).
By looking at Malaysian scenario, there are huge numbers of graduate engineers that were unemployed. According to Knight and Yorke (2004), graduates now are lacking in both technical knowledge and generic skills which are greatly needed by the employer in order to meet the challenge faced by business. For example, generic skills are creative thinking, problem solving, and analytical skills. Most of the graduate engineers only possess academic qualification which is not the only criterion considered by the employer. Therefore, educational institutions have come under intense pressure to equip students with more than just the academic skills. A number of reports issued by employers have urged universities to make more explicit effort to develop the skills needed in many types of employment. From the employers’ perspective, employability seems to refer to “work readiness” that is possession of the skills, knowledge, attitudes, and commercial understanding that will enable new graduate engineers to make productive contributions to organizational objectives soon after employment (Archer & Davision, 2008). According to Yorke (2006, p. 8), it also suggested that employability is those necessary basic skills for getting, keeping, and doing well on job.
Most of the previous findings about the desired employability profiles are based on the studies conducted mostly in the US (United States) which is definitely not representative for the Malaysian workplace environment. The studies revealed what the desired criteria considered by the employer are in the US. Thus, it becomes an interest for researcher to discover and identify what the desired employability profile required by the employers is in Malaysia, and what the skills graduate engineers needed to equip within themselves are in order to make them become a valuable human capital in Malaysia. Thus, it is necessary to come out with the model which reflects the employability profiles needed by graduates nowadays in order to fulfill the employers’ requirement. Finally, the researcher discovers the suitable aspects that can be combining together to become the APEC (academic, personal, exploratory, and connectivity) model for employability profiles.
The above model was developed from existing research into employability issues and the experience of the research (see Figure 1). The various elements of employability included in the model are discussed and their inclusions are justified on the basis of existing research. The model contains four key elements levels, and is academic skills which clearly define academic performance, college and job experience, personal management skills describe positive attitudes, responsibility, and adaptability, connectivity more on communication, IT(information technology), Networking, teamwork, and commercial awareness. The last skill is exploration skills which highlight imaginative, innovative, and creative thinking. The model exactly sets out what is meant by employability, in clear and simple terms, and the model suggests directions for interaction among the various elements.
Significance of the Study
This study was developed to produce graduate employability model which includes all the crucial characteristics which are needed by the employer when hiring personnel. This model will enhance the content of the soft skill model used by universities and can make it become more complete in order to fulfill the industrial human resource demand. It can be assumed that this is the perfect employability kit needed to produce more competent, innovative, and multifunction prospect employee.
Objectives of the Study
Nowadays, graduates face a huge challenge regarding employability and have to compete which other candidates to grab the job opportunity. However, the inner quality of the graduate engineers does not meet the employers’ requirements. Employers in the 21st century seek for the candidates that are able to adapt well to the rapid change in the industry instead of possessing a good academic achievement. According to this need and demand, this research aims to:
(1) Identify the important graduate engineers employability skills as perceived by employers;
(2) Identify the important graduate employability skills as perceived by graduates.
Research Questions
This research will outline a few aspects of preferred employability profiles necessary for the graduate engineers. This research will seek to answer the following questions:
(1) What are the employers’ perceptions of the employability skills of graduate engineers?
(2) What employability skills do graduate engineers perceive they possess?
Literature Review
Today’s reality shows that graduates leave their study life without being equipped with sufficient skills required for employment. The Malaysian government conducted a survey on Malaysian graduates, and it was discovered that about 60,000 Malaysian graduates were unemployed due to the lack of experience, poor English, poor communication skills, and because they had pursued studies irrelevant to the market place(Maatsch, 1990).
Employers today are not only looking for candidates with specific skills and knowledge, but also looking for candidates with the ability to be proactive enough to see and respond to the problems (Gurvinder Kaur & Sharan Kaur, 2008). Most of the employers in Malaysia are searching for graduates who are able to balance between academic achievement and “soft skills”, such as communication skills, problem skills, interpersonal skills, and the ability to be flexible (Greenfield, 1987).
According to Hansen (2007), through their study about the current employment transition to future employment perspective, suggested that flexibility in functioning as the key criterion or qualification was required for the employees, which enabled them to remain competitive. This is in line with the unpredictable labor market requirement which required the candidates to stay up to date in terms of knowledge and skills related to the employment.
Past researches also revealed that employers looked for certain skills, behaviors, and attitudes in their potential employees. They preferred to select candidates who are motivated, possess basic skills, and are able to adapt through the use of creative thinking and problem-solving skills, and who possess effective personal management skills, have interpersonal negotiating and teamwork skill, could influence others to act through leadership skill, and have individual responsibility, self-management and integrity (Mc Winberg, Frankel, & Woolfolk, 2007).
Research Instruments
The research respondents comprised 92 employees, all of them are graduated engineers working with Ranhill Group of Companies. This piece of research used the interviewing rating form instrument format. Respondent will be rated by the rater or the interviewer based on their performance during the interview session. As many as 10 criteria are listed in this form as the core criteria that will be evaluated by the interviewer during the interview. The 10 constructs consist of personal traits, voice quality, personality, confidence, communication, expression of ideas, mental alertness, motivation/ambition, education, and experience. The rater will rate the candidates by using 1-10 score which reflects 1 as the lowest and 10 as the excellent. The Cronbach’s alpha value of reliability for this instrument is 0.892 which reflects the high reliability of the instrument.
Research Findings
The discussion of the research findings is based on the research questions. The first part of this discussion will discuss the essential skills which the employer are looking for each of the candidates. In order to answer this question, the researchers will use the gap analysis. The second part of the finding will reveal the factors that contribute to the development of the APEC skills. Thus, stepwise regression analysis (Pallant, 2007) will be used to discover the answer for this section.
Skills Gap Analysis
Gap analysis is a tool that helps a company or organization to compare its actual performance with its potential performance. Once the general expectation of performance in the industry is understood, it is possible to compare that expectation with the company’s current level of performance. For this research, gap analysis is used to determine the gap in terms of employability skills which are the crucial part for the employee recruitment process.
The gap analysis was performed to discover the gap of each employability skill that was used in this study. Result from the analysis showed that the gap for each skill was in the medium level. The result occurred by important rank minus the satisfaction rank or the actual score minus the expected score. Analysis of the result can be made based on this indicator: -1.0 to -1.99 can be consider as the low gap; -2.0 to -2.99 can represent the medium gap; while -3.0 and above can be considered as the high gap between the actual score and the expected score.
Table 1
Skills Gap Analysis Based on Employability Skills
Based on the result, academic skill shows -2.12 gap value, personal management skill with -2.37 gap value, connectivity skill with -2.38 gap value, and exploration skill with -2.74 gap value (see Table 1). All of the gap values obtained can be classified as medium gap value which may lead to the need of continuous development program to reduce the gap of each employability skill.
However, in order to plan for more effective development program, the organization needs to know what the factors that contribute to the development of these skills (APEC) are. Thus, the researchers come out with the stepwise regression analysis to discover the contribution factor for the development of skills.
Stepwise regression analysis on academic skills among new recruited graduate engineers staff of Ranhill Group of Companies as shown in Table 2.
Table 2
Stepwise Multiple Regression Analysis for the Selected Variable Which Contribute to the Development of Academic Skills
Notes. β: coefficient; Β: unit.
The β (beta) value for the exploration skills shows great effect on academic skills, if graduate engineers have the opportunity to enhance their exploration skills (β = 0.517; Sig. T = 0.000). When the score of exploration skills adds up by 1 unit, academic skills are increased by 0.517 units with the contribution of 26.7%(see Table 2).
Stepwise regression analysis on personal management skills among new recruited graduate staff of Ranhill Group of Companies is shown in Table 3.
The β value for the connectivity skills shows great effect on personal management skills (β = 0.075; Sig. T= 0.000). When the score of connectivity skills adds up by one unit, personal management skills are increased by 0.075 units with the contribution of 42.8% (see Table 3). In other words, when the graduate engineers are exposed for more connectivity skills training, the higher personal management skills can be obtained by the graduates.
Table 3
Stepwise Multiple Regression Analysis for the Selected Variable Which Contribute to the Development of Personal Management Skills
Notes. β: coefficient; Β: unit.
Next, the β value for the exploration skills shows great effect on personal management skills (β = 0.111; Sig. T = 0.000). When the score of exploration skills adds up by one unit, personal management skills are increased by 0.111 units with the contribution of 9.2% (see Table 3). It can be considered that the higher exploration skills the graduates gained, the better personal management skills they gained.
Discussion of Findings
The findings of the study show that the gap of the employability skills exists in the medium level, in which the values were close to high gap value. It can be predicted that the employability profile of graduates in Malaysia is still in the low level. Thus, it needs a lot of effort in order to increase the quality of future graduate engineers and produce more productive and innovative human capital for multi-discipline engineering company.
One interesting finding is that the variables, including connectivity skills and exploration skills contribute and give great effect to the academic and personal management skills. This finding shows that all the elements, including academic skills, personal management skills, connectivity skills, and exploration skills have mutual-relationship in order to build a perfect model for graduates’ employability profiles. The four components (APEC) are the core quality that the employer is looking for in each of the candidates.
Several suggestions can be issued for improvement of graduate engineers’ employability skills. As an employer, he/she can reduce academic skills gap by giving graduates more challenging job experiences. This will enable them to enhance their exploration skills.
The human resource manager of the organization needs to put more focus on the development of personality management skills, if they want to achieve the paramount objectives of recruiting young graduate engineers. This aim can be achieved by giving them roles and responsibilities that can enhance their exploration and connectivity skills.
Graduate engineers can improve their employability profile by not only focusing on their academic skills achievement, but also improving their personality management skills, exploration, and connectivity skills during their college life.
Suggestions
Exploratory developmental skills are one of the contribution factors to enhance academic developmental skills. The academic staff in all universities should plan the programme which can strengthen the students’exploratory skills to their related fields, independent studies, and more practical experiences.
Step wise multiple regression shows that connectivity and exploratory skills play an important role and contribute to the developmental of personal management skills which are needed by the employer. These two variables play a vital role in the process of building up the human capital. To generate the skills, university and the internship programmes should be designed in line with programmes which more cater to working environment and socialization, such as communication, teamwork, and built Networking, so that students can survive and perform well in any situation.
Conclusion
There are a lot of researches that have been done regarding employability. Through these studies, most of employability and employment issues have been explored and many ways of solutions have been discovered. However, there is still a lack of model that was developed in the study. To fulfill this demand, this study was conducted in order to determine a complete model for employability profile development among graduates especially in Malaysia. At the end of this study, researchers have come out with the APEC model which contained four fundamental elements of employability profile: academic skills, personality management skills, exploration skills, and connectivity skills which meet the employer’s requirement in Malaysia. Surprisingly, the elements correlate strongly with each other and significant contribute to each other, which make it become a perfect model for graduates’ “soft skill” development curriculum.
References
Annual Report. (2009). Originally global: Strategically poised. Kuala Lumpur: Ranhill Berhad.
Archer, W., & Davison, J. (2008). Graduate employability: The views of employers. The council for industry and higher education. Retrieved April 11, 2012, from http://www.enhancingemployability.org.uk/details.php
Dacre Pool, L., & Sewell, P. (2007). The key to employability. Developing a Practical Model of Graduate Employability. Education + Training, 49(4), 277-289.
Graduate Employability. (2008/2009, Winter). Retrieved June 10, 2010, from http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/ p!eXbbfcm
Goleman, D. (1998). Working with emotional intelligence. London: Bloomsbury.
Greenfield, W. D. (1985). The moral socialisation of school administrators: Informal role learning. Sergiovanni, T. J. (1987, 1991).
Gurvinder Kaur, G. S., & Sharan Kaur, G. S. (2008). Malaysia graduates employability skills. UNITAR E-JOURNAL, 4(1). Retrieved January, 2008, from http://ejournal.unitar.edu.my/articles/GurvinderMalaysianGraduate_1.pdf
Hansen, U. (2007). Building employability skills into the higher education curriculum. Role of Lectures Educational and Training, 42(2), 75-83.
Knight, P., & Yorke, M. (2004). Learning, curriculum and employability in higher education. London: Routledge Falmer.
Maatsch, J. L. (1990). Linking competence to assessment tests. In S. L. Wills, & S. S. Dubin (Eds.), Maintaining professional competence (pp. 95-124). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
McWinberg, L. T., Frankel, J. R., & Woolfolk, A. E. (2007). Employability skills and career development of tertiarty students.(Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University Tasmania)
Pallant, J. (2007). SPSS survival manual: A step-by-step guide to data analysis using SPSS for Window (Version 15) (3rd ed.). Sydney: Ligare Book Printer.
Yorke, M. (2006). Employability in higher education: What it is and what it is not consolidating resources for future growth. Annual Report, 2008. Kuala Lumpur: Ranhill Berhad.
Keywords: employability, graduates, employer perspective
Introduction
This study was conducted in Ranhill, one of the Malaysia’s most successful premier engineering and construction corporation. Ranhill provides total engineering and construction solutions to a wide range of industries, from the initial conceptual studies right through to detailed engineering, construction, and commissioning. Ranhill’s principal activities are EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction); EPCMS(engineering, procurement, and construction management services); PMS (project management services); and O&M (operations and maintenance). Today, Ranhill have established an international presence, undertaking projects in South Asia, ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), the Middle East, Africa, and China.
For the past 54 years, Ranhill’s successes in the business are the results of quality graduate engineers and other professionals employed to the company. These engineers and other professionals have displayed the highest level of professionalism and dedication to deliver results. This statement is reported by the president of Ranhill(Annual Report, 2009), who has played a major role in Ranhill successful year under review, and he is proud to be at the helm of such a competent and committed workforce. Every year, thousands of graduate engineers produced by the public and private university and hundreds of graduated engineers are recruited as employee for this company. Employability skills are not only job specific, but are skills which cut horizontally across all industries and vertically across all jobs from entry level to chief executive officer (Graduate employability, Winter 2008/2009).
Statement of the Problem
Employability skills are defined as skills required not only to gain employment, but also to progress within an enterprise, so as to achieve one’s potential and successfully contribute to enterprise strategic directions. Employability also can be understood as the individual, who has a set of skills, knowledge, understanding, and personal attributes that make the person more likely to choose a secure occupation, in which they can be satisfied and successful (Dacre Pool & Sewell, 2007).
By looking at Malaysian scenario, there are huge numbers of graduate engineers that were unemployed. According to Knight and Yorke (2004), graduates now are lacking in both technical knowledge and generic skills which are greatly needed by the employer in order to meet the challenge faced by business. For example, generic skills are creative thinking, problem solving, and analytical skills. Most of the graduate engineers only possess academic qualification which is not the only criterion considered by the employer. Therefore, educational institutions have come under intense pressure to equip students with more than just the academic skills. A number of reports issued by employers have urged universities to make more explicit effort to develop the skills needed in many types of employment. From the employers’ perspective, employability seems to refer to “work readiness” that is possession of the skills, knowledge, attitudes, and commercial understanding that will enable new graduate engineers to make productive contributions to organizational objectives soon after employment (Archer & Davision, 2008). According to Yorke (2006, p. 8), it also suggested that employability is those necessary basic skills for getting, keeping, and doing well on job.
Most of the previous findings about the desired employability profiles are based on the studies conducted mostly in the US (United States) which is definitely not representative for the Malaysian workplace environment. The studies revealed what the desired criteria considered by the employer are in the US. Thus, it becomes an interest for researcher to discover and identify what the desired employability profile required by the employers is in Malaysia, and what the skills graduate engineers needed to equip within themselves are in order to make them become a valuable human capital in Malaysia. Thus, it is necessary to come out with the model which reflects the employability profiles needed by graduates nowadays in order to fulfill the employers’ requirement. Finally, the researcher discovers the suitable aspects that can be combining together to become the APEC (academic, personal, exploratory, and connectivity) model for employability profiles.
The above model was developed from existing research into employability issues and the experience of the research (see Figure 1). The various elements of employability included in the model are discussed and their inclusions are justified on the basis of existing research. The model contains four key elements levels, and is academic skills which clearly define academic performance, college and job experience, personal management skills describe positive attitudes, responsibility, and adaptability, connectivity more on communication, IT(information technology), Networking, teamwork, and commercial awareness. The last skill is exploration skills which highlight imaginative, innovative, and creative thinking. The model exactly sets out what is meant by employability, in clear and simple terms, and the model suggests directions for interaction among the various elements.
Significance of the Study
This study was developed to produce graduate employability model which includes all the crucial characteristics which are needed by the employer when hiring personnel. This model will enhance the content of the soft skill model used by universities and can make it become more complete in order to fulfill the industrial human resource demand. It can be assumed that this is the perfect employability kit needed to produce more competent, innovative, and multifunction prospect employee.
Objectives of the Study
Nowadays, graduates face a huge challenge regarding employability and have to compete which other candidates to grab the job opportunity. However, the inner quality of the graduate engineers does not meet the employers’ requirements. Employers in the 21st century seek for the candidates that are able to adapt well to the rapid change in the industry instead of possessing a good academic achievement. According to this need and demand, this research aims to:
(1) Identify the important graduate engineers employability skills as perceived by employers;
(2) Identify the important graduate employability skills as perceived by graduates.
Research Questions
This research will outline a few aspects of preferred employability profiles necessary for the graduate engineers. This research will seek to answer the following questions:
(1) What are the employers’ perceptions of the employability skills of graduate engineers?
(2) What employability skills do graduate engineers perceive they possess?
Literature Review
Today’s reality shows that graduates leave their study life without being equipped with sufficient skills required for employment. The Malaysian government conducted a survey on Malaysian graduates, and it was discovered that about 60,000 Malaysian graduates were unemployed due to the lack of experience, poor English, poor communication skills, and because they had pursued studies irrelevant to the market place(Maatsch, 1990).
Employers today are not only looking for candidates with specific skills and knowledge, but also looking for candidates with the ability to be proactive enough to see and respond to the problems (Gurvinder Kaur & Sharan Kaur, 2008). Most of the employers in Malaysia are searching for graduates who are able to balance between academic achievement and “soft skills”, such as communication skills, problem skills, interpersonal skills, and the ability to be flexible (Greenfield, 1987).
According to Hansen (2007), through their study about the current employment transition to future employment perspective, suggested that flexibility in functioning as the key criterion or qualification was required for the employees, which enabled them to remain competitive. This is in line with the unpredictable labor market requirement which required the candidates to stay up to date in terms of knowledge and skills related to the employment.
Past researches also revealed that employers looked for certain skills, behaviors, and attitudes in their potential employees. They preferred to select candidates who are motivated, possess basic skills, and are able to adapt through the use of creative thinking and problem-solving skills, and who possess effective personal management skills, have interpersonal negotiating and teamwork skill, could influence others to act through leadership skill, and have individual responsibility, self-management and integrity (Mc Winberg, Frankel, & Woolfolk, 2007).
Research Instruments
The research respondents comprised 92 employees, all of them are graduated engineers working with Ranhill Group of Companies. This piece of research used the interviewing rating form instrument format. Respondent will be rated by the rater or the interviewer based on their performance during the interview session. As many as 10 criteria are listed in this form as the core criteria that will be evaluated by the interviewer during the interview. The 10 constructs consist of personal traits, voice quality, personality, confidence, communication, expression of ideas, mental alertness, motivation/ambition, education, and experience. The rater will rate the candidates by using 1-10 score which reflects 1 as the lowest and 10 as the excellent. The Cronbach’s alpha value of reliability for this instrument is 0.892 which reflects the high reliability of the instrument.
Research Findings
The discussion of the research findings is based on the research questions. The first part of this discussion will discuss the essential skills which the employer are looking for each of the candidates. In order to answer this question, the researchers will use the gap analysis. The second part of the finding will reveal the factors that contribute to the development of the APEC skills. Thus, stepwise regression analysis (Pallant, 2007) will be used to discover the answer for this section.
Skills Gap Analysis
Gap analysis is a tool that helps a company or organization to compare its actual performance with its potential performance. Once the general expectation of performance in the industry is understood, it is possible to compare that expectation with the company’s current level of performance. For this research, gap analysis is used to determine the gap in terms of employability skills which are the crucial part for the employee recruitment process.
The gap analysis was performed to discover the gap of each employability skill that was used in this study. Result from the analysis showed that the gap for each skill was in the medium level. The result occurred by important rank minus the satisfaction rank or the actual score minus the expected score. Analysis of the result can be made based on this indicator: -1.0 to -1.99 can be consider as the low gap; -2.0 to -2.99 can represent the medium gap; while -3.0 and above can be considered as the high gap between the actual score and the expected score.
Table 1
Skills Gap Analysis Based on Employability Skills
Based on the result, academic skill shows -2.12 gap value, personal management skill with -2.37 gap value, connectivity skill with -2.38 gap value, and exploration skill with -2.74 gap value (see Table 1). All of the gap values obtained can be classified as medium gap value which may lead to the need of continuous development program to reduce the gap of each employability skill.
However, in order to plan for more effective development program, the organization needs to know what the factors that contribute to the development of these skills (APEC) are. Thus, the researchers come out with the stepwise regression analysis to discover the contribution factor for the development of skills.
Stepwise regression analysis on academic skills among new recruited graduate engineers staff of Ranhill Group of Companies as shown in Table 2.
Table 2
Stepwise Multiple Regression Analysis for the Selected Variable Which Contribute to the Development of Academic Skills
Notes. β: coefficient; Β: unit.
The β (beta) value for the exploration skills shows great effect on academic skills, if graduate engineers have the opportunity to enhance their exploration skills (β = 0.517; Sig. T = 0.000). When the score of exploration skills adds up by 1 unit, academic skills are increased by 0.517 units with the contribution of 26.7%(see Table 2).
Stepwise regression analysis on personal management skills among new recruited graduate staff of Ranhill Group of Companies is shown in Table 3.
The β value for the connectivity skills shows great effect on personal management skills (β = 0.075; Sig. T= 0.000). When the score of connectivity skills adds up by one unit, personal management skills are increased by 0.075 units with the contribution of 42.8% (see Table 3). In other words, when the graduate engineers are exposed for more connectivity skills training, the higher personal management skills can be obtained by the graduates.
Table 3
Stepwise Multiple Regression Analysis for the Selected Variable Which Contribute to the Development of Personal Management Skills
Notes. β: coefficient; Β: unit.
Next, the β value for the exploration skills shows great effect on personal management skills (β = 0.111; Sig. T = 0.000). When the score of exploration skills adds up by one unit, personal management skills are increased by 0.111 units with the contribution of 9.2% (see Table 3). It can be considered that the higher exploration skills the graduates gained, the better personal management skills they gained.
Discussion of Findings
The findings of the study show that the gap of the employability skills exists in the medium level, in which the values were close to high gap value. It can be predicted that the employability profile of graduates in Malaysia is still in the low level. Thus, it needs a lot of effort in order to increase the quality of future graduate engineers and produce more productive and innovative human capital for multi-discipline engineering company.
One interesting finding is that the variables, including connectivity skills and exploration skills contribute and give great effect to the academic and personal management skills. This finding shows that all the elements, including academic skills, personal management skills, connectivity skills, and exploration skills have mutual-relationship in order to build a perfect model for graduates’ employability profiles. The four components (APEC) are the core quality that the employer is looking for in each of the candidates.
Several suggestions can be issued for improvement of graduate engineers’ employability skills. As an employer, he/she can reduce academic skills gap by giving graduates more challenging job experiences. This will enable them to enhance their exploration skills.
The human resource manager of the organization needs to put more focus on the development of personality management skills, if they want to achieve the paramount objectives of recruiting young graduate engineers. This aim can be achieved by giving them roles and responsibilities that can enhance their exploration and connectivity skills.
Graduate engineers can improve their employability profile by not only focusing on their academic skills achievement, but also improving their personality management skills, exploration, and connectivity skills during their college life.
Suggestions
Exploratory developmental skills are one of the contribution factors to enhance academic developmental skills. The academic staff in all universities should plan the programme which can strengthen the students’exploratory skills to their related fields, independent studies, and more practical experiences.
Step wise multiple regression shows that connectivity and exploratory skills play an important role and contribute to the developmental of personal management skills which are needed by the employer. These two variables play a vital role in the process of building up the human capital. To generate the skills, university and the internship programmes should be designed in line with programmes which more cater to working environment and socialization, such as communication, teamwork, and built Networking, so that students can survive and perform well in any situation.
Conclusion
There are a lot of researches that have been done regarding employability. Through these studies, most of employability and employment issues have been explored and many ways of solutions have been discovered. However, there is still a lack of model that was developed in the study. To fulfill this demand, this study was conducted in order to determine a complete model for employability profile development among graduates especially in Malaysia. At the end of this study, researchers have come out with the APEC model which contained four fundamental elements of employability profile: academic skills, personality management skills, exploration skills, and connectivity skills which meet the employer’s requirement in Malaysia. Surprisingly, the elements correlate strongly with each other and significant contribute to each other, which make it become a perfect model for graduates’ “soft skill” development curriculum.
References
Annual Report. (2009). Originally global: Strategically poised. Kuala Lumpur: Ranhill Berhad.
Archer, W., & Davison, J. (2008). Graduate employability: The views of employers. The council for industry and higher education. Retrieved April 11, 2012, from http://www.enhancingemployability.org.uk/details.php
Dacre Pool, L., & Sewell, P. (2007). The key to employability. Developing a Practical Model of Graduate Employability. Education + Training, 49(4), 277-289.
Graduate Employability. (2008/2009, Winter). Retrieved June 10, 2010, from http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/ p!eXbbfcm
Goleman, D. (1998). Working with emotional intelligence. London: Bloomsbury.
Greenfield, W. D. (1985). The moral socialisation of school administrators: Informal role learning. Sergiovanni, T. J. (1987, 1991).
Gurvinder Kaur, G. S., & Sharan Kaur, G. S. (2008). Malaysia graduates employability skills. UNITAR E-JOURNAL, 4(1). Retrieved January, 2008, from http://ejournal.unitar.edu.my/articles/GurvinderMalaysianGraduate_1.pdf
Hansen, U. (2007). Building employability skills into the higher education curriculum. Role of Lectures Educational and Training, 42(2), 75-83.
Knight, P., & Yorke, M. (2004). Learning, curriculum and employability in higher education. London: Routledge Falmer.
Maatsch, J. L. (1990). Linking competence to assessment tests. In S. L. Wills, & S. S. Dubin (Eds.), Maintaining professional competence (pp. 95-124). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
McWinberg, L. T., Frankel, J. R., & Woolfolk, A. E. (2007). Employability skills and career development of tertiarty students.(Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University Tasmania)
Pallant, J. (2007). SPSS survival manual: A step-by-step guide to data analysis using SPSS for Window (Version 15) (3rd ed.). Sydney: Ligare Book Printer.
Yorke, M. (2006). Employability in higher education: What it is and what it is not consolidating resources for future growth. Annual Report, 2008. Kuala Lumpur: Ranhill Berhad.