Stakeholders' perspective towards employability: a hybrid fuzzy AHP-TOPSIS Approach

Employability skills are a significant concern for both graduates and practitioners. However, there is limited research on identifying and prioritizing factors affecting employability from experts' perspectives, particularly in emerging economies. To prioritize the perceived employability skills of stakeholders', a hybrid fuzzy AHP-TOPSIS approach was used from the perspective of subject experts rather than just relying on the student's perspective. Criteria and sub-criteria are identified and finalized with the help of the literature and the expert's opinions. 45 experts' (industry, academician, and students) opinions are taken into consideration. Secondly, fuzzy AHP is implemented to get the weights of identified criteria and sub-criteria to rank them. Thirdly, these weights are used in the fuzzy TOPSIS approach to rank the five alternatives. 'Soft Skills' is the most important criteria and 'Personal Qualities' is the least important criteria having the normalized weight of 0.355 and 0.043 respectively. The most important sub-criteria among all sub-criteria are 'Innovation Skills' followed by 'Methodological Skills'. The least important sub-criteria is 'Self-Esteem'. This unique empirical study identifies factors impacting graduate employability, prioritizes criteria and sub-criteria, and recommends the optimal candidate using an integrated fuzzy AHP-TOPSIS approach.