Graduates Employability Skills: Hard and Soft Skills Towards Employee Productivity from the Perspective of Malaysian Employers

Abstract

The IS professional is a person endowed with certain professional skills and attributes usually formally obtained through an education process. The IS professional may also have formal skills in peripheral, non technical areas that may too be obtained through a formal education process. This is typical now in the education of IS students who are aspiring IS professional. In addition they come with a range of soft skills that may be attitudinal and influenced by life and work experiences. This paper suggests that these skills, attributes and work environment do not sit in isolation from each other, but interact in an as yet unmeasured way. How this happens with students studying towards an IS qualification is discussed here and a structural model is developed to explain the interactions. The value of this research is that a picture is presented that shows the interactions between these important elements in a quantitative way.

Stepping Into Industry Reality: Reviewing the Roles of Cooperative Education and Internships in Fostering Construction Education

“…It is therefore paramount that construction professionals are adequately prepared, well skilled and possess the necessary work experience to thrive in the industry, thereby increasing the need for improved construction education in our present day. Therefore, in fostering construction education, the HEIs, through their activities and actions, are primarily development hubs which are pivotal in the strengthening of future industry professionals to solve arising industry problems (Storen & Aamodt, 2010;Munap et al, 2015). These activities and actions by HEIs therefore make them key in developing construction students to enable them become industry-ready.…”