Abstract

This quantitative research aims to study the relationship between three major factors influencing the employ ability skills among the graduates and the moderating effect of the graduate’s attitude towards the development of skills. The research problem relates to the issue of unemployment among the local graduates and mismatch of skills.

The objective of this research is to (a) measure the employ ability skills of the graduates from the higher education institutions in Malaysia, (b) analyze the significant relationship between higher education with employ ability skills, working experience with employ ability skills and training with employ ability skills and (c) examine whether the attitude of the graduates influences the development of employ ability skills.

To achieve the research objectives, a questionnaire was distributed to 300 graduates from higher education institutions in Malaysia. The hypothesis was tested using one sample t-test, correlation analysis, and mediation analysis. The findings of this research revealed that the graduates are equipped with most of the generic employ ability skills such as ICT skills, teamwork, leadership skills, and good time management. However, the graduates would still need to improve their communication, problem-solving and analytical skills.

The research also found a significant relationship between employ ability skills with higher education, working experience, and training. Furthermore, training was the highest contributing factors for the development of employ ability skills. The attitude of the graduates had a significant correlation between higher education with employ ability, and training with employ ability skills.

However, the attitude of the graduates showed no significant effect on the correlation between working experience and employ ability skills.