An international profile of industry-relevant competencies and skill gaps in modern graduates

At a time when graduates are increasingly being relied upon to add value and foster innovative practice in organisations, concerns for the impact of an endemic graduate skills gap are growing. Higher education institutions (HEIs) are consistently blamed for soft skill deficiencies and many are now pursuing policies on the development of generic skills. This paper unpacks the concept of graduate employability by presenting a table of industry-relevant competencies, including assigned definitions and empirical assessments of their relative importance, identified by employers internationally over the past ten years. Findings articulate what businesses need from today's graduates and depict the nature and extent of graduate skill gaps worldwide. They also confirm an extensive and confusing range of definitions assigned to individual competencies, validating concerns for current graduate employability policies and calling for a fresh approach to profiling industry's requirements of the modern graduate.