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The purpose of this study is to determine whether there is a significant difference between employers and students on their perceptions of the importance of skills and traits critical for securing entry‐level employment in operations management. Another major concern in this study is whether employers value general skills more than technical abilities. To address our research questions, a two‐page questionnaire was developed. We found significant differences in mean scores between employers and students in their perceptions of the importance of general skills, technical skills, and personality characteristics. In addition, our findings indicate that employers value general skills significantly higher than technical skills. The results of this study provide a foundation for operations management programs in curricula reengineering and ultimately provide the business community with more qualified applicants.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the soft skill gap of graduate employees, as well as the factors influencing the skill gaps of real estate graduates in the employment of real estate firms in Nigeria.

Primary data were employed for the study. Close-ended questionnaire served on real estate employers in the two major property markets of Nigeria: Lagos and Abuja. From a total of 343 questionnaires administered, 172 (59.7%) questionnaires were retrieved. While data from the graduate employees were obtained via a web-based survey sent out to a total of 558 graduates, 119 (21.33%) responses were received. Descriptive and inferential statistical techniques were employed in the data analysis.

The findings showed that employers had high expectations for soft skillsets relating to responsibility, administrative, listening and communication skills. These have respective mean scores of 6.38, 6.33, 6.31 and 6.31 on a seven point scale. However, the results revealed significant skill gaps with skills such as logical thinking, business negotiation, responsibility and marketing. Further, the analysis revealed that factors influencing the skill gap, in decreasing order of influence, are training/professional mentors/remuneration, personal preferences/industry characteristics and curriculum/faculties.

Real estate graduate soft skills are investigated to uncover areas of emphasis and skill gaps. These outcomes could serve as important feedbacks for stakeholders towards improving real estate teaching and curriculum. The findings could also assist real estate graduates to know employers areas of emphasis in relation to graduate employability skills.

Extant studies have reiterated and evaluated the soft skills gaps based on the perceptions of employers, faculties and institutions of higher learning. However, there is the need to investigate the perception of graduate employees, being the recipient and major stakeholders in the training process.

This paper explores the institutional and economic drivers of employability, as existing literature focuses on the individual and skills aspects, of employability. Tertiary institutions, possessing a strong academic reputation and standing amongst potential employers, will achieve high graduate employability, however when measured, this is not the case.

This exploratory study builds on Santos' career boundary theory, recognising organisational boundaries; those related to the labour market, personal-aspects and finally, cultural boundaries (Santos, 2020). 37 Universities that provided their employability rate, within 12 months of graduation for 2020, are analysed. The Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Ranking, measures drivers in terms of institutional reputation through survey responses, and partnerships with employers via research and placement data.

The regression explained 19% of the variation between the number of graduates being employed and the institutional and economic drivers. Universities in the same economic context, do not have the same number of employed students. Equally, those universities with the most favourable academic reputation, do not have the most employed student rate.

Only 37 universities provided all their employability data, thus, research with a larger sample will have to be conducted, but equally more needs to be done to establish why the smaller universities are unable to submit all the required data.

An exploratory understanding of the institutional and economic drivers of employability, is provided.

Despite the institutional calls to include the development of non-technical skills as objectives in accounting curriculum and the attempts to do so, a gap between the level of skills exhibited by graduates and those needed to succeed as a professional is still perceived. One of the possible causes could be students' overconfidence, defined as a very optimistic assessment of their own abilities. The main objective of the paper is to assess the existence of overconfidence.

Two samples, students and employers were surveyed regarding the exhibited level of accounting graduates in a set of 22 non-technical skills, highlighted as relevant in the literature. This enabled a comparison of the opinions of employers with the perceptions of students concerning the demonstrated level of such skills.

The results of this study support the existence of students' overconfidence. In all the skills students score their ability higher than employers do with those differences being statistically significant in 21 out of 22 skills. Employers who are in closer contact with entry level accountants perceive even lower exhibited skills levels in graduates.

Overconfident students would be less motivated to actively participate in activities designed to improve skills resulting in underachievement and in lower performance. This low performance in highly valued skills could potentially harm their employability.

Although the literature focussing on non-technical skills in accounting is prolific there are few papers comparing the views of employers and students, and there are no previous studies focussing on overconfidence.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate students’ perceptions of the value, impact, benefits and disadvantages of in-house, university-based work experience vs off-campus work experience.

Three focus groups, one consisting of students who had undertaken work experience off-campus at an employers’ workplace (n=6), one consisting of students who had undertaken work experience in-house with a university-based employer (n=6), and a third mixed group (n=6, consisting of students who had undertaken both types), were formed. Focus group data were supplemented by interviews (n=3). Data were transcribed and analysed thematically.

Based on student perceptions, both types of work experience were thought to: enhance future employment; provide career insight; enable skill/experience acquisition and application; and be useful for building relationships. Work experience that occurred in-house was, in addition, perceived to be cost effective; enabling students to be more closely supervised and supported; good for relationship building between and within students/staff; beneficial for increasing student attainment; and enabling students to see the link between theory and practice more clearly. In-house work experience was, however, deemed to be restricted in terms of variety, and links with and perceptions of external stakeholders.

The study is limited in that it is based on the perceptions of students undertaking unique types of integrated work experience within one faculty at one university.

When deciding on whether in-house or off-campus work experiences are offered, consideration should be given to level of support, supervision, observation, and travel and time costs.

Original views of students regarding in-house work experience have been gathered, which can be used to inform in-course workplace practices.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how students perceive their future careers and how university has prepared them to enter the global labor market; student perceptions regarding benefits vs associated costs of pursuing higher education (HE) on employability and earnings; and the anticipated barriers and how to overcome these in pursuit of career sustainability within a career ecosystem.

The authors adopted a qualitative method using semi-structured interviews on a small sample of 38 final year students from a UK university who were also participants in an earlier two-wave quantitative survey, which was conducted with 387 penultimate and final year undergraduates from the same UK-based University.

Findings revealed that undergraduates perceive their investment in HE to offer a net financial gain; however, this is narrowing due to increased tuition fees, associated student debt and interest payments eroding earning premiums. As undergraduates progress, they feel more employable from a personal perspective, but less employable from a market perspective due to competition for graduate jobs and the cost/benefit conflict of resources.

The authors provide nine opportunities for enhancing the employability of graduates collaborating with graduate employers, providing a timely contribution to the social, political and economic debate on the funding of HE.

The authors advance career theory via the new perspective of Career Ecosystem Theory by: explaining student career perceptions in terms of how university has prepared them for the global labor market; exploring the perceived costs vs benefits of pursuing HE in relation to employability; suggesting a two-dimensional model of personal and market factors of employability; providing a model of careers advice from employers and universities for supporting students’ careers; and offering policy implications in relation to the future funding of HE and employability of future graduates.

Despite the availability of retail management graduates, retailers continue to recruit graduates from any discipline. A key issue, therefore, is to what extent are retail degrees developing the competences of prime importance to retailers? Conversely, considering retailer graduate recruitment objectives, how well do students understand retailers’ priorities amongst competences in graduate selection? As a relatively recent management profession, do the retail competences differ from other more established management disciplines such as finance? This paper examines these issues through the results of a survey of employer and undergraduate perceptions of competence development in undergraduate degrees. Findings suggest that retail degrees provided a high level of perceived competence development. However, the strongest focus was not necessarily on those competences the retailers most wished to see in applicants. Furthermore, the competence profile of placement work was no closer to the retailers’ selection priorities than that of academic work. The paper concludes with a discussion of the main implications for retailers and retail management degrees.

Drawing on the psychological contract theory and signaling theory, the purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine the effect of employer rankings and employment experience on employee recommendation of an employer as an employer of choice and second, to examine whether these effects vary by employee characteristics (i.e. full-time vs part-time, current vs former and newcomers vs established employees).

The authors used multilevel logistic regression on a sample of 39,010 Glassdoor employee reviews, drawn from the companies for which three-year employer rankings (from 2015 to 2017) were available, to achieve our research objectives.

The results show that employment experience influenced employees’ recommendation of an employer as an employer of choice. The average standardized rankings for three years (i.e. 2015–2017) was also associated with employees’ recommendation of an employer as an employer of choice. Employee characteristics such as employment type (i.e. full-time vs part-time), employment status (i.e. current vs former) and tenure significantly interacted with employment experience in affecting recommendations of a company as an employer of choice.

In contrast to the bulk of the research on employer branding that relied on job seekers, the authors studied factors that influence employees’ recommendation of an employer as an employer of choice, arguably the most important indicator of employer internal brand strength. The results offer fresh theoretical and practical insights in an area where research lags far behind practice.

Companies have to consider people as one of the most important resources. Especially, the combination of demanding work and academic workers requires activities with regard to employer branding. An employer brand is an intangible asset that allows companies to look for motivated and capable employees (Hillebrandt, 2013). Consequently, the concept of employer branding can be used (Brickson, 2005; Heilmann et al., 2013). The purpose of this paper is to supplement the first empirical investigations with students as new employees (e.g. Daniel et al., 2015) by the perceptions of potential employees in less powerful, i.e. more rural, regions.

This paper summarizes existing findings and enhances two empirical investigations of 431 students of a technical university in a medium-sized city and 211 students of a university of applied sciences in a rural region in Germany. The data collection and analysis will focus on different methodical alternatives of identifying important drivers and dimensions of employer branding, as well as identifying different groups of potential employees and gender differences.

The paper highlights the need of the underrepresented but successful consideration of group specific analyses and following strategies in case of employer branding. The existing approaches of the establishment of an employer branding concepts can be improved through more suitable strategy elements when the addressees are better known.

The findings allow new insights, especially to smaller regions and companies and the awareness of group-specific analyses in general and in case of the development of an employer branding concept.

Upon entering developed markets, emerging market multinational corporations (EMNCs) from China and India must compete with both host companies and other developed nation MNCs to attract and recruit necessary local talent. The purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent EMNC firms will be perceived as less attractive employers than their developed nation counterparts due to a perceived liability of origin bias. Major demographic and psychographic factors that may affect this bias will also be identified.

Seven hypotheses were tested on a total of 626 German, French and American respondents. Participants were randomly presented identical job descriptions from four hypothetical MNCs (American, European, Indian and Chinese) and were asked to evaluate the perceived attractiveness of working for, as well as their intent to pursue employment with, the offering firm.

Using hierarchical linear regression testing, combined with analysis of variance testing, EMNCs were found to have significantly lower organizational attractiveness than equivalent European or American owned MNCs. Mixed results were found for the various hypotheses based on the moderator variables.

Because the study included three distinct sub-groups, supplemental analyses controlling for possible variances between the sub-groups themselves are included. This multicultural study is one of the first to address the human perspective of EMNC outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) by identifying the existence of a potential liability of origin bias toward emerging market firms manifested by potential developed market job applicants. Furthermore, this study is one of the first to examine the influence of applicant age, professional status, gender and nationality with respect to the differences in the perceived level of organizational attractiveness between emerging market and developed nation firms.

This paper extends the literature in three important research areas. First, an extension to the literature on the highly relevant topic of OFDI by Chinese and Indian firms is made. Second, traditional research in the field of organizational attractiveness is further extended by combining it with the timely subject of Chinese and Indian OFDI into developed markets. Finally, this study extends international business literature by studying the influence of demographic and psychographic moderators on the perceived level of organizational attractiveness between emerging market and developed nation firms.