Employability skills and job performance of graduate students in developing countries: The moderating role

Abstract

Previous studies on employability skills and job performance utilised data fromemployers and students without paying attention to graduates who workconcurrently. These studies also presume that having acquired employability skills, one will perform on the job. According to other studies, this is far fromreality duetorecent mismatches between graduate skills and their jobs. Thus, questions  remainas to whether the link between employability skills and job performance has beenthoroughly investigated. Against this  background, the current study examinedthemoderation of skill mismatch on the relationship between employability skills andgraduate  job performance. Data were collected from 580 respondents and analysedusing PLS-SEM. It was revealed that skill mismatch moderates  this relationship. It was also indicated that the perceptions of graduates who work concurrently wereequally relevant for assessing this  link. Future studies were, thus, recommendedtoconsider the perceptions of graduates who work concurrently in their respective studies.