Employability Skills in Health Services Management: perceptions of recent graduates

Abstract

Background: Employer skill requirements of graduates are monitored by Graduate Careers Australia, but health services management (HSM) specific employability skills (ES) perceived by graduates to be important on the job and their perceptions of skills they need to improve are not well reported. Academics need this feedback to improve course employment outcomes by helping current students identify and articulate appropriatecompetencies to potential employers. Also teaching of industry requirements can help improve job matching for employers.
 Method: Recent graduates working in HSM in New South Wales, Australia were surveyed to rate ES for importance and rate their own skill levels on the same items. The gap between these two ratings was identified for 44 ES. Results: ES important to recent graduates in rank order were: verbal communication skills, integrity and ethical conduct, time management, teamwork, priority setting, ability to work independently, organisational skills, written communication, being flexible and open minded and networking. Highest self-ratings were found for integrity and ethical conduct, ability to work independently, being flexible and open minded, tertiary qualifications, interpersonal skills, written communication skills, time management, life-long learning, priority setting and administration skills. Generally graduates rated their skills lower than their ratings of importance.
 Conclusions: Recent graduates can provide valuable feedback to universities about ES required for HSM positions and identify their own skill gaps for development at work or through study. Generic skills rather than job-specific skills are what they rate as most important. Closer engagement of universities and employers is recommended especially through placements.
 Abbreviations: ES – employability skills; GCA – Graduate Careers Australia; HEI – higher education institutions; HRM – human resource management; HSM – health services management; IPC – interpersonal and communication skills.

Comparing Australian graduate employees’ “use of connections” and Chinese “sea-turtle” graduate employees’ use of “guanxi”

“…The effectiveness of graduate attributes and SOQs has been measured for adequacy of university programs (Nagarajan & Edwards, 2014) and relevance to employment outcomes (Messum, Wilkes, Jackson, & Peters, 2016). Arnold and MacKenzie Davey's (1994) survey found that graduates seek to use their SOQs for clarity about finding their career direction.…”

Exploring the use of self-assessment to facilitate health students’ generic skills development

“…Aligning with this trend, employment sectors for health graduates have also gone through significant changes as a result of advances in medical science, healthcare and financial reforms, and globalisation (Biesma et al, 2008). Employability for health graduates, like other disciplines, has therefore been considered a vital agenda to maximise their capacity to cope with this rapidly changing, uncertain and highly competitive labour market (Biesma et al, 2008;Messum, Wilkes, Jackson, & Peters, 2016;Murdoch-Eaton & Whittle, 2011).…”

“…For example, employers in Europe valued generic skills relatively higher than discipline-specific competencies while recruiting public health graduates (Biesma et al, 2008). Similarly in Australia, the increasing importance of generic skills was perceived by both employers and graduates in the health services management sector (Messum, Wilkes, & Jackson, 2015;Messum et al, 2016). From the learning perspective, promoting generic skills has been considered an essential factor for meeting the learning needs of diverse student cohorts who come from the globalised world and will work within an equally diverse, dynamic and globalised health care system (Frenk et al, 2010).…”

The Moderating Effects of Gender, Career, Moral Mindset on the Relationship Between the Graduate Attributes and Readiness for Employability Among Engineering Colleges Graduates in Oman

“…Worldwide, graduates' readiness for employability skills gaps are noticed by many studies. For example, in Australia, there is an indication of about 22.4% of health employers reported having problems when hiring new graduates for not having the required readiness for employability skills (Messum, Wilkes, Jackson, & Peters, 2016). Similarly, 64% of Indian engineering work providers reported that they are not satisfied with their fresh recruited graduates (Blom & Saeki, 2011).…”