The employability of higher education graduates: the employers’ perspective

The point of departure of this study was a lack of information on the employers’ perspective on what makes graduates employable. The study uses an innovative approach to look at employers’ preferences for graduates, namely by simulating the selection process with hypothetical candidates. The responses from more than 900 employers in nine different European countries were complemented with in-depth interviews with employers as well as focus groups of relevant stakeholders in 12 European countries. The study provides insight into:„„ the major trends on the labour market for higher education (HE) graduates and how these trends impact the skills that HE graduates are supposed to have;„„ the key characteristics that employers look at when they recruit HE graduates; the skills that graduates should possess in order to be employable;„„ how higher education institutions (HEIs) can best enable students to develop employable profiles; and„„ the dilemmas that HEIs face when improving employability.

The most important conclusions of this study are: (1) professional expertise (i.e. subject-specific knowledge and expert thinking) is paramount; (2) interpersonal skills are becoming more and more important; (3) work experience gets graduates the job interview; (4) there is some room in an organisation for specialisation (innovative/creative and commercial/entrepreneurial skills); (5) strategic/organisational skills are needed for long-term career opportunities; international orientation is appreciated; (6) graduates are expected to have well developed general academic skills and there is no indication that these are lacking; (7) there is no difference in what is needed for short-term employability and long-term employability; (8) underperformance comes at great cost for employers as well as graduates; and (9) time is precious so it should be well spent - determining the balance between the common set of skills required for every student and the set of skills that lend themselves for specialisation on top of this common core is key to developing, high quality relevant curricula for HE.

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