Home / Regular Issue / JST Vol. 30 (4) Dec. 2022 / JSSH-8517-2021

 

Soft Skills and Graduate Employability: Evidence from Malaysian Tracer Study

Nora Mohd Basir, Yong Zulina Zubairi, Rohana Jani and Diana Abdul Wahab

Pertanika Journal of Science & Technology, Volume 30, Issue 4, December 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47836/pjssh.30.4.26

Keywords: Employability, graduate, higher education, logistic regression, soft skills

Published on: 15 December 2022

Recent trends in graduate employment have raised concerns among higher education providers and other stakeholders. Issues concerning the soft skills gap have been constantly raised so that industries and universities can adopt various initiatives to address this situation. In addition, employment has shifted from production to service, increasing the importance of soft skills. This study aims to map graduates’ soft skills and employment status after graduation. The Ministry of Higher Education repository was used to select 100,413 first-degree graduates who had completed their studies. Logistic regression analysis created the graduate employability predictive model, which yielded a 77% accuracy. The findings show that 85.5% of graduates were employed during data collection. The predictive model suggests that graduate employability status is affected by factors such as gender, family income, the field of study, MUET, CGPA, internship, entrepreneurship course, working experience, communication skills, analytical skills, teamwork, positive values, and general knowledge.

  • Chavan, M., & Carter, L. (2018). Management students – Expectations and perceptions on work readiness. International Journal of Educational Management, 32(5), 825-850. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEM-10-2016-0219

  • Cheong, K.-C., Hill, C., Fernandez-Chung, R., & Leong, Y.-C. (2016). Employing the ‘‘unemployable’: Employer perceptions of Malaysian graduates. Studies in Higher Education, 41(12), 2253-2270. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1034260

  • Department of Statistics Malaysia. (2020). Press release: Key statistics of labour force in Malaysia, February 2020. https://www.dosm.gov.my/v1/index.php?r=column/pdfPrev&id=dXllODRFL1RMd3hIenBSOFRSallPQT09

  • Gault, J., Leach, E., & Duey, M. (2010). Effects of business internships on job marketability: The employers’ perspective. Education+Training, 52(1), 76-88. https://doi.org/10.1108/00400911011017690

  • Hairi, F., Toee, M. N. A., & Razzaly, W. (2011). Employers’ perception on soft skills of graduates: A study of Intel elite soft skill training. International Conference on Teaching & Learning in Higher Education, 1-8.

  • He, S., Li, X., & Chen, J. (2021). Application of data mining in predicting college graduates employment. In 2021 4th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Big Data (ICAIBD) (pp. 65-69). IEEE. http:// doi.org/10.1109/ICAIBD51990.2021.9459039

  • Hossain, M. I., Yagamaran, K. S. A., Afrin, T., Limon, N., Nasiruzzaman, M., & Karim, A. M. (2018). Factors influencing unemployment among fresh graduates: A case study in Klang Valley, Malaysia. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 8(9), 1494-1507. https://doi.org/10.6007/ijarbss/v8-i9/4859

  • Ibrahim, A., & Mistree, A. A. (2019). Preparing graduates for the world of competition: A normative role of higher education. International Journal of Academic Research and Development, 2(5), 371-374.

  • International Labour Organization. (2020). World employment and social outlook: Trends 2020. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_734455.pdf

  • Jamaludin, K. A., Alias, N., DeWitt, D., Kenayathulla, H. B., & Razzaq, A. R. A. (2019). Employability skills valued by employers in Malaysia. Jurnal Kurikulum & Pengajaran Asia Pasifik, 7(2), 30-37. http://ajba.um.edu.my/index.php/JUKU/article/view/18040

  • Jayasingha, D. G. M. S., & Suraweera, S. M. B. L. (2020). An analysis of the factors affecting the graduates’ employability in case of Rajarata University of Sri Lanka. IRE Journals, 3(12), 10-24.

  • Juhdi, N., Jauhariah, A., & Yunus, S. (2007). A study on employability skills of university graduates. The Business Wallpaper, 2(1), 1-6.

  • Koe, W. L. (2019). Individual entrepreneurial orientation and perceived employability among university graduates. In Proceedings of the Regional Conference on Science, Technology and Social Sciences (RCSTSS 2016) (pp. 69-77). Springer.

  • Ministry of Higher Education. (2020). Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025 (Higher Education). https://www.mohe.gov.my/en/pppm-pt

  • Nafi, M. N. A., & Ghani, I. A. (2011). Modelling employability of graduates using logistic regression. Journal of Statistical Modeling and Analytics, 2(1), 45-51.

  • Nguyen, Q. H., Ly, H. B., Ho, L. S., Al-Ansari, N., Le, H. V., Tran, V. Q., Prakash, I., & Pham, B. T. (2021). Influence of data splitting on performance of machine learning models in prediction of shear strength of soil. Mathematical Problems in Engineering, 2021, 4832864. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/4832864

  • Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2017). Executive summary. In Education at a glance 2017: OECD Indicators. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/eag-2017-5-en

  • Othman, Z., Shan, S. W., Yusoff, I., & Kee, C. P. (2018). Classification techniques for predicting graduate employability. International Journal on Advanced Science, Engineering and Information Technology, 8(4-2), 1712-1720.

  • Passaretta, G., & Triventi, M. (2015). Working experience during higher education and post-graduation occupational outcomes: A comparative study on four European countries. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 56(3-4), 232-253. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020715215587772

  • Piad, K. C., Dumlao, M., Ballera, M. A., & Ambat, S. C. (2016). Predicting IT employability using data mining techniques. In 2016 Third International Conference on Digital Information Processing, Data Mining, and Wireless Communications (DIPDMWC) (pp. 26-30). IEEE. http://doi.org/10.1109/DIPDMWC.2016.7529358

  • Pinto, L. H., & Ramalheira, D. C. (2017). Perceived employability of business graduates: The effect of academic performance and extracurricular activities. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 99, 165-178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2017.01.005

  • Rashid A. M. Z, (2003), Strategies to reduce unemployment among graduate and youth. Majlis Tindakan Ekonomi Negara.

  • Razak, M. I. M., Ahmad, I., & De Mello, G. (2014). Factors influencing unemployment among graduates in Malaysia. Lap Lambert Academic Publishing.

  • Nagaraj, S., Goh, K. L., Cheong, K. C., Tey, N. P., & Jani, R. (2014). Gender imbalance in educational attainment and labour market dynamics: Evidence from Malaysia. Malaysian Journal of Economic Studies, 51, 127-145.

  • Seng, L. C. (2018). Malaysia public universities’ graduate employability policies: An analysis of first degree graduates unemployment and underemployment issues. International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research, 6(4), 480-489.

  • Statistics Canada. (2017). Are bachelor’s degree holders finding jobs that match their studies? https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98-200-x/2016025/98-200-x2016025-eng.pdf

  • Succi, C., & Canovi, M. (2020), Soft skills to enhance graduate employability: Comparing students and employers’ perceptions. Studies in Higher Education, 45, 1834-1847. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1585420

  • Teng, W., Ma, C., Pahlevansharif, S., & Turner, J. J. (2019). Graduate readiness for the employment market of the 4th industrial revolution: The development of soft employability skills. Education and Training, 61(5), 590-604. https://doi.org/10.1108/ET-07-2018-0154

  • Ting, S. H., Marzuki, E., Chuah, K. M., Misieng, J., & Jerome, C. (2017). Employers’ views on the importance of English proficiency and communication skill for employability in Malaysia. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 7(2), 315-327.

  • Yang, S., & Berdine, G. (2017). The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The Southwest Respiratory and Critical Care Chronicles, 5(19), 34-36.

  • Yorke, M. (2006). Employability in higher education: what it is-what it is not (Vol. 1). Higher Education Academy. https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/employability-higher-education-what-it-what-it-not.

  • Yunus, F. (2007, November 12-13). Skills development in higher education and employment [Paper presentation]. Seminar on Higher Education and Graduate Employability: New Direction, Trends and Challenges, Equatorial Hotel, Bangi, Malaysia.

  • Zainuddin, S. Z. B., Pillai, S., Dumanig, F. P., & Phillip, A. (2019). English language and graduate employability. Education + Training, 61(1), 79-93. https://doi.org/10.1108/ET-06-2017-0089

ISSN 0128-7680

e-ISSN 2231-8526

Article ID

JSSH-8517-2021

Download Full Article PDF

Share this article

Related Articles