Improving Graduates’ Employability Skills through Industrial Training: Suggestions from Employers

Industrial training is considered to be an effective tool to enhance graduates’ employability. The objective of this study is to explore employers’ suggestions on how to improve students’ performance so that they are work-ready when they graduate. Open ended responses were obtained from questionnaires administered to 179 employers who offered 12 weeks of industrial training for 186 students in one Malaysian research university. The results indicated a satisfactory level of students’ performance during the training. Most employers were willing to recruit the students in future. Technical skills were ranked as needing the most improvement by students. The employers suggested that the duration of industrial training was too short and should be extended to 6 months for the training to be beneficial to the students. Keywords: employability skills, industrial training, graduates, employers’ perspectives