Employability Skill traits Management Quotient [ESMQ] - A Conceptual Model Proposal

Abstract

To remain competitive in a technology driven, fast changing, globalised business environment, and pursue sustainable development goals; Companies today are demanding a high degree of professionalism, intellectual common sense, emotional maturity, domain knowledge, competitive techno-functional competencies from the new breed of graduating students, engineers and value chain managers. Human Resource capacity enhancement and development of functional capabilities in new work related skills, per say employability skill improvement, has become a major challenge across organizations and institutions, especially from emerging and developing economies. In the context of higher education, to address these challenges, a structured, systematic and collaborative approach by strengthening Industry Academia Interface [I.A.I.] can inherently supplement professional skill development efforts of graduating students. University Industry Collaboration or I.A.I. is emerging as a key growth area in the context of academic value addition and value integration that would inadvertently supplement conventional classroom learning of traditional education formats. A mutually integrative engagement model for I.A.I. is illustrated as Collaborative Engagement for Organizational Development and Employability (CODE) in this paper. Thereupon to infuse a fresh perspective across various competitive skills desired by the employers, in the categories of hard and soft skills, with a blend of basic and advanced life skill traits; various subset elements of graduate employability are grouped to develop a graphical perspective of an Employability Skill Traits Management Quotient (ESMQ). This paper contains the concept proposal, structure, synthesis and theoretical analysis of the ESMQ model, from various organizational frames of references. It is believed that the proposed ESMQ Model would assist in designing varying levels of training interventions, through Accelerated Learning Programs (ALPs) that would distinctly enhance the overall employability of graduating students; consequently making them ready for speedy absorption in Businesses and Industry.