Qualifications and skills: the organisational perspective

This paper portrays the inferences that employers in Greece draw from particular aspects of study programmes, as recorded on educational qualifications. Based on semi‐structured interviews with human resource managers in 37 industrial and service organisations and general directors of careers offices in eight higher education institutions, and building from inductive data processing and analysis, a theoretical model of selection strategies has been developed. The study showed that regardless of the selection methods used by organisations to assess candidates for employment, a great stock of information about the applicants is extracted from aspects of their educational experience, information which refers not only to technical expertise but also to capacity, personality and motivation as well.