Employability skills: Maintaining relevance in marketing education

Employability is an important outcome of education and particularly so with vocationally orientated degrees such as Marketing. Supporting this there is a wide range of literature discussing the variety of skills that should be developed within students in general and those on business and marketing courses in particular (Bennett, Dunne, & Carre, 1999, Hillage & Pollard, 1998, Zinser, 2003) however, with increasing competition for graduate placements and jobs it is important to ensure that the skills under discussion remain relevant to the conditions of the job market and that any new requirements are identified that will help to give students an ‘edge’. This study that was undertaken to explore the meaning, purpose and relevance of the employability skills. Qualitative and quantitative research was undertaken amongst employers of marketing and business graduates to examined how they rated the importance of the ‘employability’ skills that the university strives to develop in its students and sought to identify other traits that they looked for in ‘would be successful’ candidates. The objectives of this research study were to explore the range of employability skills that are offered to students, investigate the relevance and desirability of the current employability skills amongst current graduate employers, identify whether employers have other decision making criteria which are being overlooked by the university and assess the implication for learning and teaching in respect of LSBU marketing courses.