Enhancing Malaysian Graduate Employability Skills: Quality Function Deployment Approach

Abstract

In the challenging economic world, employers are looking for graduates employees who are able drive organization to compete successfully in the market. Graduates should equip themselves with relevant employability skill as needed by the recent employers. Besides that, higher education institutions must evaluate the effectiveness of employability skills development approaches on graduates' employability skills. The main objectives of this study are to identify the important of Malaysian graduates' employability skills and to identify the most effective employability skills development approaches. This study used Quality Function Deployment method to evaluate the effectiveness of the employability skills development approaches. In general, the result of this study shows that employers placed highest important on ability of the graduates to speak fluently in English and then followed by the ability of the graduates to write effectively in English and the ability of the graduates to think critically. Meanwhile, the final result of the Quality Function Deployment shows that work integrated learning is most effective employability skills development approach with a percentage priority of 31 percent. The next most effective approaches are stand-alone subject model with 19 percent and then followed by academic support programme, embedded subject model, nonacademic support programme and campus life activities.

Eight Dimensions of Basic Employability Skills: A Survey on the Academics’ Level of Awareness

“…While item 3 (the ability to work toward agreements involving the exchange of opinions and resolve divergent issues) has the lowest mean score (m = 4.54; SD = .720) The overall mean score as well the mean scores for each item in this dimension indicate that the respondents have a high level of awareness on the interpersonal skills as part of GE skills. This is in accordance with Warraich and Ameen (2010); Hamid et al (2013) who state that employers seek graduates who have six dimensions of employability skills, which include interpersonal skills. As shown in Table 6, Information Technology Skills has an overall mean score of 4.38 (SD = .755).…”

Graduate employability post-COVID-19: the case of a Malaysian public university

“…Normally, graduates tend to fail because they do not demonstrate this marketability and by only showing their academic merit (Ali et al, 2018). Some of the skills required are such as verbal and written communication, problem solving, teamwork, personal qualities, leadership, analytical and also technical skills (Suleman, 2016;Hamid et al, 2013). These skills can be categorized into five dimensions which are: (1) application skill; (2) self-efficacy; (3) metacognition; (4) entrepreneurship skill and (5) soft-skill (Ali et al, 2018).…”

“…In terms of the employability skills development, Hamid et al (2013) found that the most effective approach for employability skills development is work integrated learning. This followed by stand alone subject model, academic support programme, embedded subject model, non-academic support programme and the least is campus life activities.…”