Perception Gap of Employability Skills between Employers' and Female Engineering Graduates in Saudi Arabia

The objective of the work is to explore possible perception gap between female engineering graduates and industrial employers about the employability skills. A five-point Likert type scale questionnaire was administered to 355 senior engineering students from six universities and 81 industrial employers in Saudi Arabia. After checking the reliability of data, gap analysis, independent sample t-tests and paired t-tests were used to analyze the data. Results indicated a significant gap between students' perception and employers' expectation. Employers were found to give more importance to basic skills of communication, interpersonal and creativity, while students considered their technical capabilities more important in getting them jobs. Further analysis revealed that students' skill level is less than their perceived importance about these skills. This study gives an insight for the betterment of engineering programs.