Factors in Non-Technical Skills Development Among Engineering Students: An Employers’ Perspective

Abstract

Many complaints come from employers regarding on non-technical skills among engineering graduates. Non-technical skills can be effectively developed during industrial training while they are still undergraduates. This paper is presenting the perspective of employers on factors that are developing the non-technical skills during industrial training. A qualitative study was done by interviewing five employers from electrical and electronics industries to gain the data. Thematic analysis was done after transcripting the interview protocols. The result shows that employers nowadays really need communication skills, critical thinking and problem-solving skills in an engineer. In addition, teamwork skills, lifelong learning, ethics and computing skills are the skills that are mentioned by the interviewed employers. In term of factor affecting students' non-technical skills during industrial training, they are two opinions for the first factor which is placement. Three out of five employers agreed the relevant industry to the course is crucial, but the rest disagreed. The reasons of disagreement are because the development of non-technical skills should base on the task given and the student's motivation in learning. All employers are agreed with six months duration, regular assessment, task given must be relevant with projects and presentation, and the learning outcomes must be revised regularly.

Engineering Students’ Industrial Internship Experience Perception and Satisfaction: Work Experience Scale Validation

“…According to Azmi et al [30], the length of six months is the optimal period for an undergraduate to learn technical and non-technical skills and to gain work experience. Azmi et al [28] found that employers prefer the period of six months for engineering students in order for them to identify, study, comprehend, and employ the skills learned during the internship.…”

“…Tymon [18] addressed the matter through the students' perspectives on employability and found that there was limited alignment between students' and stakeholders' views. Some studies, in addition, addressed the students' satisfaction with the internship experience [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] and suggested measures to improve internship effectiveness, namely, clarification of tasks, communication, and expectations on challenging assignments to be completed in reasonable time [30], together with feedback and mentoring [31].…”

Eight Discipline-Problem Based Learning in Industrial Training Program to Develop Future Proof Skills Among Graduate Engineers

“…In this context, the existing industrial training program has some drawbacks, including insufficient documentation, a lack of industrial training procedures and guidelines, a lack of recorded industrial training syllabus and standards of practice, and a lack of defined goals and curricular structure. In addition, existence of a gap in students' industrial training diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments; learning outcomes after completion of training; and host company supervisor competency in implementing industrial training and training engineering students [3]; which shows almost the same outcome according to the research conducted by [4] after five years. This illustrates that changes made to correct the enhancement of non-technical skills through industrial training still do not resolve the real root cause and still have a discrepancy in what we have developed and what the employer wants.…”