Plenary lecture 4: engineering employability skills required by employers in Asia

Employers nowadays place main concern on and give emphasis to employability skills in potential engineers which caused a significant increase in unemployment among engineering graduates in Malaysia. There are several discussions and studies on What types of skills and abilities are needed in the workplace? How the government and higher education overcomes this rising phenomenon? This study attempts to look into engineering employability skills that have been required for their new engineers by other countries in Asia such as Malaysia, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. This paper will put forward a list comprised of the skills needed by these four countries, and compare the existing similarities and differences of these enlisted skills. Information was gathered from articles, journals, papers and reports. The findings indicate that these countries have published reports on the necessary frameworks of employability skills to prepare engineering graduates for the employment today and in the future. Overall, the studies suggest that the engineering graduates should acquire and demonstrate a set of generic skills such as communication skills, problem solving and interpersonal skills.