Thanks folks for your wonderful queries.  We need to look this issue from three angles.

1.  Expectation of various industries from a fresh graduate.

2.  Do the undergraduates match such expectation?

3.  Do academic institutions contribute to the development of employability skills of their undergraduates?  

Yes i would like to participate in such type of collaborative research. 

What type of research?

This sounds interesting. Could you provide more detail about your proposal?

I have done some research regarding employability by using social networks, but I know there are other resources an means.

Thanks folks for your wonderful queries.  We need to look this issue from three angles.

1.  Expectation of various industries from a fresh graduate.

2.  Do the undergraduates match such expectation?

3.  Do academic institutions contribute to the development of employability skills of their undergraduates?  

I am afraid the answer is "not" for those three questions, except by number 1, that one is interesting, to develop it further it would be interesting to know:

How to fill out the gap between expectations from graduates and requirements from industries?

I have allready recolected variables as employability, emotional intelligence and other variables related to job satisfaction in a sample of 400 graduates.

I think there are some important questions here but we need to understand what we mean by a 'fresh graduate'. Also when we talk about expectations of employers/industry we need to think about how we 'measure' these. Who do we gather data from? How? Is it individuals involved in recruitment? is it line managers? HR professional? Employer associations? There are also some important questions related to notions of employability and what this is. I would recommend looking at the work of Leonard Holmes -some interesting perspectives related to this.

Dear Alejandro, Itziar, Tracy,

Thanks for wonderful contributions.  

Tracy, by 'fresh graduate' we mean the individual who just completed the studies and is willing to take up employment.  You are absolutely right about the data source.  We should gather data from recruitment specialists, line managers, HR specialists and see how they view employability.  Also, let us take employability skills in its simplest form i.e., those skills that would enable the individual to be employable soon after his / her studies (in our case).  Of course, there are n number of factors that could influence employability of an individual.  Here in this study, we are going to look at only those intrinsic factors which make a fresh graduate employable, may be soft skills, may be hard skills.

Itziar, wonderful to know that you have already collected data about employability.  Interesting to know the kind of variable your used for employability.

Alejandro,  in order to answer the question you developed i.e., How to fill out the gap between expectations from graduates and requirements from industries, we need to understand the expectations of industry, the current capabilities of students vis-a-vis expactions and also need to look at as to how best the gap can be filled.  In the case of fresh graduates, the role of academics in making an individual employable is very important as all these employability skills are to be imparted during the academic days itself in order to make someone employable soon after the studies.

Yes, I would like to participate too.The 3 points are questions of great importance for us in Brazil.

If you want to recollect information in a similar sample and compare the groups of graduates, please, let me know. Thanks

I am interested,  when you are ready with the full details, let me know.

I am very interested, since our research on education service qulaity has shown that our business school is loosing on its sttractiveness because of decreasing employability.  I'd be happy to work on it more.. Let me know about your research agenda. Thanks

We are engaged in a similar project related wit the social needs and aims of tne Gran Canaria ' Island society. So I would like to collaborate with you.

Paco

I am very interested in the topic, have just started researching employability and currently looking into different concepts existing. Are you planning to address specific study field/ industry or rather look into generic and social competencies?

I am interested, when you are ready with the full details, let me know

That would be an interesting study to be part of. Please, I would like to contribute, if possible. Dental education in Brazil would benefit from the outcome of this study. 

Sounds interesting. Let's know what you propose.

Dear all,

I will get back to you with details...  Thanks for your kind gesture.

I was mentoring a student doing her master thesis on differences between students perceptions of employers' expectations and actual employers' expectations and the results were quite unexpected: in short, student were convinced that their average study success (measured by average grades) was the most important issue, while employers were looking for some extra skills and experience, not only in the job area. I am currently working with a doctoral candidate on similar research which includes current students, former (now employed) students and their perceptions on the quality of the education service they have received on one side, and on the other their employers' satisfaction with their skills and competencies.

I refer to Gokulas' contribution above. There is an often ignored dimension, which is the universities' own expectations of their graduates. What does a graduate of a particular institution look like? What attributes do they need to have. This can then be followed up with a match between industry expectations and the attributes expected by the university. That creates for your study a baseline for comparative analysis

As a result of the change in product demand and change in technological  advancements there has been a shift in the focus of organizations. various industries  now expect "generic" or soft skills"  from university graduates and unfortunately many studies around the world show that many of the graduates are deficient in these. Since the demand for labour is a derived demand, the universities are expected to respond to the the changing demands of the world of work by adequately preparing gradutes for the world of work.

Dear Gordon Ade-ojo,  

As a matter of fact, every university is expected to set forth the attributes of their graduates based on the feedback from the relevant industry.  How far this aspect is considered by each educational institution is a matter of concern since the outcomes of their courses must be aligned with the graduate attributes which in turn should reflect in the employability of the students.  If there is a mismatch, it would result in the a situation like what is mentioned by Oluyomibo Pitan.

Gokuladas:

I think you can find some clues with the competencies approach. The Dissertation I made for my Specialization was about matching between competencies approaches used by higher education institutes and private companies. The conclusions I reached were that there is that models are very diverse, and then, there are a specific kind of competence (transversal competence) that plays an important role in adapting acquired skills to a variety of work environments.

I am working in this topic, 1. Expectation of various industries from a fresh graduate. I am applying one survey over generic skill to employers about fresh graduates from engineering 

I am interested in a collaboarative study. Cameroon has embarked on a widely publicized professionalization policy. I have done some research on this. Get back to me with the details.

Yes i am interested in conducting such sort of study.

No reason why not. There could be various dimensions to it: international, subject specialism etc

I love to join the collaboration..

How to start the collaboration??

I'm also interested but how do we start?

Hi Gokul,

             I am doing my PhD in the same area. You can refer to India Skills Report to see the Indian Scenario. Cant comment on the authenticity of the report.

I am from Philippines. I am willing.