Assess the gap of professional competence between learning outcomes of bachelor programs in Business & Management and employers’ recruitment requirements

Abstract: Understanding which knowledge and skills are most important to employers and knowing the gap that fresh graduates actually possess to the level of competence required by employers to perform well their job from employer’s perspective is extremely important for graduates when entering the career world. The research team conducted a survey based on a questionnaire of 17 competence measures to explore the importance of each measure. Sixty-six respondents, who are at the levels of manager and above, represented for 66 employers from different sectors in Vietnam responded to the survey. Given the survey data analysis, five competence measures including: 1) The ability to work effectively with others in teams; 2) The ability to effectively communicate orally; 3) The ability to locate, organize, and evaluate information from multiple sources; 4) Critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills; and 5) Ethical judgment and decision-making were identified as the most importance measures to employers. Additionally, the gaps between the level that fresh graduates possess and the levels required by employers regarding those most important measures were also quantified. The results also show that there are still significant gaps that fresh graduate will have to fulfill to meet employer’s recruitment requirements. This results not only helps graduates clearly understands their actual competence for employability, but also help universities identify the focusing areas to improve the curriculum and teaching methods of their bachelor programs.