Students Skills Assessment with the Purpose to Increase their Employment Possibilities

Incorporation of employability skills in the industrial engineering curriculum to bridge the gap between industry and institutions of higher education has become a major issue. This study seeks to asses both employability skills and retentability threshold of the industrial engineering students. The employability skills were assessed based on the skills that require training, skills that are needed for job performance and skills that are received and emphasized in the industrial engineering curriculum. Two batches of questionnaires are administered to the participants of the study. The first batch is administered online to students, employed alumni and faculty members. The second batch is distributed to instructors of industrial engineering core courses. Seven cogent employability skills of the thirty-six employability skills items that were previously reported are employed in the evaluation. Of the seven employability skills, following management, leadership and information technology skills are identified as skills that require additional training. The responses toward skills required for job performance and skills that are received/emphasized in the curriculum are ranked higher by participants based on the percentage of agreement. This study advocated that the perception of participants provides greater insight into the skills items that should be emphasized in the industrial engineering curriculum to enhance the employability of graduates. On the another hand, employability aptitude survey cognitive test is proposed to assess the retentability threshold of the students with the view of appraising the capabilities of engineering students in readiness for engineering positions. Numerical ability, space visualization, numerical reasoning, and symbolic reasoning responses are adapted into the model. 106 undergraduate students of the Department of Industrial Engineering at Eastern Mediterranean University selected across freshman, sophomore, junior and senior in the 2016-2017 academic years assessed their aptitudes through the proposed EAS cognitive tests. Analysis of variance is employed to analyze the model and the results indicate that there is a significant difference between students’ abilities in terms of raw scores and respective academic levels. Academic years and CGPA groups are found to have significant effects on the student’s percentile. Additionally, strong correlations between CGPA and the student’s percentile are found. However, space visualization ability is not affected by academic progression. Keywords: aptitude, EAS-cognitive tests, student’s percentile, engineering, rententability-threshold, battery score, attitudes, curriculum; employability skills, performance skills, training