Employers' Perception On Soft Skills Of Graduates: A Study Of Intel Elite Soft Skill Training International Conference on Teaching & Learning in Higher Education (ICTLHE 2011)

Abstract Acquiring soft skills competencies becomes increasingly important and relevant for those who are providing services. Human Resource practitioners and employers still find the local graduates lacking or mismatching of relevant soft skills competencies required in their job positions. This paper is a survey research. Basically, this research is about employers' perception on soft skills and about the Intel eLite soft skill training to enhance the soft skills of the graduates. The Intel eLite Program, which is initiated by Intel Malaysia, is an university-industry collaboration between Intel and Faculty of Electrical Engineering of Universiti Teknologi Mara. The objectives are to identify the soft skills required by local and multi-national companies and to identify the contributing factors of graduates' unemployment. This research is done to evaluate the soft skills training program for the Intel eLite students, in terms of speaker, content of the training modules and the facility where the session was held. A total of 79 employers responded to the Questionnaire A and 93 Intel eLite students responded to the Questionnaire B. The findings show that all skills identified in the soft skill training of Intel eLite program are important in working place. Lacking of soft skills become the most likely factors to the unemployment issue of our graduates. Intel eLite program has proven to be a good intervention program to overcome the lack of the relevant soft skills from the perception of students. However a few improvements were suggested