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EMPLOYERS’ VS GRADUATES’ PERCEPTION ON EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS POSSESSION OF THE
GRADUATES: A CASE STUDY OF APPLIED SCIENCE GRADUATES
The observed Mann-Whitney U
value, with the Z value, for each
employability skills was shown in the table
3. For each employability skills, the
asymptotic significance p value is less than
he specified α level (.01), reject H0. Thus, at
the 0.01 level of significance, there is
sufficient evidence to conclude that there is
a difference between the perception of
employers and the perception of
undergraduates with regard to employability
skills.
5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The research was intended to identify if
there are any differences in perceptions of
graduates and employers with regard to the
employability skills inherent in graduates. It
should be noted that in the study there was a
significant difference between employers’
and undergraduates’ perception for all 16
employability skills.
The analysis supports the conclusion that
the undergraduates rated their employability
skills as being relatively high and
employers’ perception of graduates’
employability skills is lower than that for the
graduates. There is a contradiction of
employers and graduates perceptions on
skills inherent and skills possession. If
employer could communicate their needs by
having multilateral cooperation with both
higher education institutions and
government, this gap could be reduced and
universities would be able to produced
work- ready graduates.
A similar study could be conducted in
the future with graduates and respective
employers matching sets of graduates rather
using the future graduates. Hence the exact
perceptions concerning the employability
skills that the graduates possess could be
assessed.
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