Demystifying the impact of university graduate’s core competencies on work performance: A Saudi industrial perspective

This study aims to investigate whether the graduates’ core competencies are fairly sufficient to get employed and also aims to understand the impact of these employable skill (ES) on work performance (WP). Toward this, a theoretical framework was developed by considering delivery-related competencies (DRCs), interpersonal competencies (IPCs), and strategic competencies (SCs) as independent variables and ESs and WP as predictable variables. The survey was conducted across private companies in Saudi through a questionnaire that received 235 completed responses. A qualitative approach by conducting few interviews were also considered to gain possible value added comments from the respondents. An exploratory factor analysis) using varimax rotation was conducted to evaluate the impact of competencies on ESs and its further effect on WP. The results demonstrated that, though the DRCs and IPCs have low positive significant effect on the overall ESs, the SCs were not able to significantly predict the recent graduates’ ESs. It is also evident that the overall ESs are not significantly predicting the WP. The indirect effect of independent variables on WP through the mediation of ESs were also assessed using AMOS software. The results revealed that ESs have a significant partial mediating effect only between delivery competencies, IPCs, and WP but not with SCs. The findings also provide a deep insight to the national recruiters to consider the competency-based management. The study is limited to understand the fresh graduates’ competencies, so the results cannot be generalized to experienced graduates. Further, few important recommendations were also proposed to the higher education establishments to strengthen their efforts and finely groom their future graduates according to the global labor market. The study also sheds numerous directions to potential new graduates for enhancing their present skills and to become competent in the job market