Business and Management graduates’ perspective on the importance of learning outcomes of bachelor programs to meet the recruitment requirements of enterprises in Vietnam

ABSTRACT:

It is important to understand and know the knowledge and skills gaps between what fresh business and management graduates have and what employers expect. This study evaluates the importance of learning outcomes based on the perspective of newly-graduated employees in order to help educational institutions better understand students' experience on specific requirements of employers and up-coming recruitment trends in the future, as well as grasp the actual status of their bachelor programs’ learning outcomes. Therefore, universities can determine what they need to do urgently to help their graduates to meet the recruiting requirements of employers. In addition, knowing whether recent graduates have met the requirements of the entry-level job will also help the Business & Management programs at universities to evaluate what they are offering their students is enough to convince employers and leaders of companies or not. The assessment of which knowledge and skills of newly graduated employees are the most important to perform well the jobs would help universities identify the focused areas to improve their training strategies and teaching methods.

Keywords: employee, employer, employability, business and management graduates, learning outcomes, knowledge and skills.

1. Introduction

Recently, universities in Vietnam generally and Business & Management programs of universities particularly have encountered a worrying situation as the increasing number of graduates have not yet equipped with the learning outcomes to meet the working requirements of employers. On the opposite side, enterprises also face many difficulties in recruiting new graduates with appropriate qualifications and job requirements. Low quality of graduates leads the firms to retrain them from scratch due to lack of working knowledge, which costs a lot of money for recruitment activities and retraining programs. In contrast, fresh graduates have to try their best to find a job, even not really related to their qualifications (National Assembly, 2019). With the goal of comprehensively renovating Vietnam's higher education in a practical direction and applying technology and digital transformation into teaching in the 2021-2030 period (MOET, 2020), higher education institutions need to apply advanced methods to develop learning programs to meet the needs of Vietnamese students, society and international integration. And obviously, a prerequisite for better teaching methods is how to solve the problem of the capacity gaps between graduates and the actual requirements of the labor market.

There is a need to better understand the gap between the level of knowledge and skills that fresh graduates are equipped when completing their university business and management programs and the level that employers require to perform well in their jobs. This includes a need to identify the most important learning outcomes that industry expects to see in fresh graduates. Additionally, knowing if fresh graduates already meet the requirements of their job at the entry level is also very essential for universities in Vietnam to consider if what they are offering their students is sufficient or not. Understanding the gaps of some specific graduate outcomes will also help universities identify focusing areas for improvement.

The results of this research are expected to contribute a significant knowledge to the fields of economics, management and education. The research shows the current situation of competence of fresh graduates of Business and Management programs, that can contribute to the improvement of teaching and learning methods, and the quality of education at universities. In addition, from graduates’ experience on the importance of learning outcomes, the research is also expected to help students better find a good way to improve their current abilities and prepare a strategy for their future jobs.

2. Current situation of higher education and employability in Vietnam

According to recent statistics from the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), there are about 120,000 university and college graduates nationwide who cannot find jobs (GSO & MOET, 2020). In addition, according to statistics of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, about 60% of graduates work in the industry, which is not in accordance with their bachelor programs (ILO, 2021). The problem that graduates cannot find jobs or employees’ quality cannot meet the actual needs of enterprises is always a concern both universities and employers in Vietnam. This issue partly belongs to the students' own abilities.

Generation Z as "the generation reaching adulthood in the second decade of the 21st century”, start-up and digital world, globalization and the growth of retailer marketing are shaping the changes of Vietnam's employment market (Nielsen, 2018). While the graduates are showing the tendency to “quick win”, work less – gain more, the employers are expecting the fresh graduate to work harder and resiliently to adapt stressful working environment. In the high competition, employability skills become more important for employers (Lan, 2021). In order to achieve this, beside those who rely on internal promotion, some emerging trends have witnessed are Management Training, early training, bringing candidates to real life and talent exchange programs.       

Many studies have shown that training programs have not been updated in a timely manner and the learning outcomes of bachelor programs no longer meet the recruitment requirements of enterprises. In the context of increasing work capacity requirements and complexity of nature work, bachelor programs need equip fresh graduates with appropriate knowledge, skills and attitudes to meet industry recruitment standards. However, Vietnam’s education system has experimented with a number of higher education reforms over the last two decades, with some success in expanding access but missing opportunities in achieving good results on quality and relevance, and in furthering equity. The MOET is in the process of formulating the new Higher Education Strategy/Master Plan (2021-2030). The main objective of future Vietnamese higher education is to become a dynamic, inclusive, flexible higher education sector that can achieve academic excellence in graduates who are highly qualified and come up with many researches that can positively impact national and regional economies (MOET, 2020). However, there are still significant struggles of universities in Vietnam such as: teaching program; limited value of rankings; exaggerated and self-flagellated about the education systems; rankings for commercial purposes; and lack of career guidance.

To help higher education institutions around the world identify what kind of competency that the industry is looking for their business. Association of American Colleges & Universities (AACU) conducted a research that points out 17 learning outcomes that students need to achieve, with different levels of proficiency, after graduation from various fields in general. The result shows that when hiring recent college graduates, employers say they place the greatest priority on demonstrated proficiency in skills and knowledge that cut across majors. Written and oral communication skills, teamwork skills, ethical decision-making, critical thinking skills, and the ability to apply knowledge in real-world settings are the most important values among the 17 skills and knowledge. Besides, employers also believe that engaging students in applied learning projects will improve their learning and better prepare themselves for career success.

3. Research methodology

This study was started by reviewing all the aspects related to the gaps of knowledge and skills that the university graduates are incurring to meet employers’ recruiting requirements. Before designing the research, the research team analyzed and overviewed the actual output standards and issues affecting the output quality of bachelor's degree programs in business and management. At the same time, the topic will also analyze the general competency requirements that recruitment enterprises need from fresh graduates. Based on the findings from literature, a list of 17 learning outcomes that are supposed to be necessary for graduates from bachelor programs is identified. Based on the literature findings, a questionnaire was developed for the survey to collect necessary data for analysis. The team sent the questionnaire to 40 employees, who recently graduated from the Business and Management bachelor program of FPT University for the data collection process. Thirty-five employees from different 35 enterprises provide qualified response to the survey.

35 respondents come from many sectors of businesses such as: automotive, logistics, retail, financial corporation, health care, public relation, petroleum, tourism, education, technology, banks, real estate, and so on. They are all fresh graduates working in business sector at starting level/job position for one or two years.

With 17 learning outcomes research team ask employees to score on a scale from 1 to 5 with the scales are described specifically for each type of question (e.g. from Very Unimportant to Very Important). The team calculated the average score on a 5-point scale and then converted it back to percentages to know which learning outcomes are considered the most important by employees.

4. Research results and key findings

Nearly 73% of respondents think that a wide range of knowledge and skills to apply to many different fields or positions are more important, while the rest think fresh graduates just need in-depth knowledge and skills to be applicable to one or a few specific fields or positions.

Respondents are asked to rate the importance of learning outcomes for newly-graduated employees regarding 17 different skills and knowledge. The team find out Five most important learning outcomes among 17 identified learning outcomes. These include:

Regarding the “Ability to effectively communicate orally”, fresh graduates think that it is the most important to be appreciated at workplace. In fact, there are many companies that only pay a small amount of attention to the candidate's degree, universities. They place a lot of emphasis on the candidate's communication skills and attitude. Soft skills are the act of knowing people through communication to understand each other so that they can work effectively. Students who are not good at communication are shown through documents such as resumes, through conversations in interviews and in daily life and when working with coworkers. Fresh graduates who still have poor communication skills, are hard to convey the information to impress employers.

“Critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills” is ranked second by the surveyed employees. At school as well as in the working environment, critical thinking is an important foundation, because this is a potential factor to produce good leaders. Besides, this is the key to help students to learn better. In the process of teamwork, people possessing good thinking and critical thinking skills will help the group's decisions go in the right direction and not be influenced by emotions. Good critical thinkers are never in a hurry to accept new ideas and assumptions. They will try to determine and analyze if the ideas or arguments represent the whole point. Instead of relying on intuition and instinct, they use systematic analysis, reasoning, and problem-solving. This can make their work less risky and will be appreciated by the company's leaders.

For the “Ability to work effectively with others in teams” to perform well their work at the entry level, newly graduated employees need to pay attention to how to behave during teamwork tasks. In the process of education and training at universities today, group/teamwork is one of the selected active teaching and learning methods. Working in groups will help students gain many other skills such as communication, cooperation, listening, from which students can exchange and expand more opportunities and knowledge for themselves. Most students always realize the importance of teamwork. However, there are still limitations in training curriculums to fully equip students with those skills. In the working environment, teamwork skills are more and more important for employees to successfully perform their jobs.

The “ability to innovate and be creative” are also important for their entry job level. Many people often think that the starting position is just a simple but odd, repetitive but takes a lot of time to complete. However, for people with the ability to be innovative and creative, they will know how to handle those odd jobs in a new and most effective way, saving both their energy as well as resources for the enterprises. Such people will be highly appreciated by managers for their thinking and mindset, having ability to become leaders and up-coming managers in the future.

As a developing country, Vietnamese employment market always need an employee who are “Proficient in at least one foreign language”. Fresh graduates believe that if they are good at popular business languages such as English, Chinese, Spanish, French, Korean, Japanese, etc. they can get a better-paid job in the market. The business of enterprises today is not only confined to the domestic scope. It also expands its cooperation with many countries around the world. English and some other languages have become popular with more than half of the world's countries using it and is the main language of communication in the business world. For this reason, if students have good foreign language proficiency, they can work with any partner from any country in the world. In fact, when recruiting employees, HR team always asks candidates about their foreign language ability and then can make a salary-deal with potential one.

From fresh graduates’ perspective, FPT University's Business and Management program should provide students with the following programs or activities before graduation so that students can have good knowledge and experience prepared for their future job. 87.5% of surveyed employees assume that internship within an organization during the school year is the most important. They also appreciate “study abroad program” and “senior thesis/project”, that is the reason why many students right after graduation, they choose to take a course in another country or want to complete a master degree before finding a job.

5. Implications for universities in Vietnam

Business and Management in general is a fairly broad field and graduates has the ability to do a variety of jobs. That is the strength, but also the weakness of this discipline. Although there are specific sub-disciplines in the learning process, to further improve the output quality and avoid confusion in the learning process, universities can spend a period of time in the first semester to provide a career service and help new students in Business and Management program determine the specific career they want to pursue. In fact, this period should be established as a part of the curriculum. By seriously identifying the goal right from the beginning, it will help students not spend much time going around and focus more on cultivating skills to improve their professional capacity and avoid job confusion. Enterprises in Vietnam are always ready to provide additional training for new graduates, but the more skills an employee can meet from the beginning, the more appreciation the employers will have on them, and that will bring an advantage for employees during their job searching process. Additionally, universities should focus on expanding career networks with firms and enterprises, then send their students into internships and work placements in companies with an aim to learn and get used to the job and working environment instead of just focusing on solving the graduation thesis problem.

REFERENCES:

1. AACU & Hart Research Associates. (2015). Falling Short? College Learning and Career Success. Washington, D.C., United States: Association of American Colleges and Universities.
2. ILO. (2021). Gender and labor market in Vietnam, Analytical report based on Labor - Employment Survey data. Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Organization.
3. Lan, P.T.T (2021). The labor market in a modern and complete market economy. Communist Review.
4. MOET. (2017). Conference to summarize the performance of higher education tasks in the 2016-2017 school year. Hanoi: Ministry of Education and Training.
5. MOET. (2017). The Director of the Higher Education Department explains why graduates cannot find jobs. Hanoi: Ministry of Education and Training.
6. MOET. (2020). General figures for Higher Education 2020. Hanoi: Ministry of Education and Training.
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11. Nielsen (2018). Connect with Generation Z in Vietnam: How Can Brands Interact with The Future Generation of Consumers?
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Góc nhìn từ sinh viên tốt nghiệp ngành Kinh doanh và Quản lý về tầm quan trọng của chuẩn đầu ra các chương trình đào tạo, đáp ứng yêu cầu tuyển dụng của doanh nghiệp tại Việt Nam

Đào Phương Bắc ¹

Nguyễn Việt Thắng ¹

ThS. Hà Nguyên ¹

ThS. Nguyễn Văn Quân ²

¹ Viện Quản trị Kinh doanh và Công nghệ FSB, Đại học FPT

² Học viện Chính sách và Phát triển, Bộ Kế hoạch và Đầu tư

TÓM TẮT:

Việc hiểu và nắm rõ khoảng cách về trình độ kiến thức và kỹ năng mà sinh viên mới tốt nghiệp được trang bị khi hoàn thành chương trình cử nhân ngành Kinh doanh và Quản lý so với mức độ nhà tuyển dụng yêu cầu để thực hiện tốt công việc là vô cùng quan trọng. Nghiên cứu đánh giá tầm quan trọng của các chuẩn đầu ra theo góc nhìn trải nghiệm của sinh viên đã tốt nghiệp, nhằm giúp các tổ chức giáo dục hiểu rõ hơn cảm nhận của sinh viên, yêu cầu cụ thể của các nhà tuyển dụng hiện nay, xu hướng tuyển dụng trong tương lai, đồng thời nắm bắt được thực trạng chuẩn đầu ra của các chương trình đào tạo của mình. Từ đó, các trường xác định được cần phải làm gì để giúp sinh viên sau khi ra trường đáp ứng được yêu cầu của nhà tuyển dụng. Ngoài ra, việc biết được sinh viên mới tốt nghiệp đã đáp ứng được yêu cầu công việc ở trình độ khởi điểm hay chưa cũng sẽ giúp các trường đại học đánh giá thực tế được những năng lực của mình đã đủ thuyết phục nhà tuyển dụng và lãnh đạo của các công ty hay chưa. Việc đánh giá được những kiến thức và kỹ năng nào quan trọng nhất phục vụ cho năng lực làm việc của sinh viên ở doanh nghiệp sẽ giúp các trường đại học xác định được trọng tâm để cải thiện chiến lược và phương pháp đào tạo của mình.

Từ khóa: nhân viên, chủ sử dụng lao động, khả năng tuyển dụng, sinh viên tốt nghiệp chuyên ngành Kinh doanh và Quản lý, kết quả học tập, kiến ​​thức và kỹ năng.

[Tạp chí Công Thương - Các kết quả nghiên cứu khoa học và ứng dụng công nghệ, Số 24, tháng 10 năm 2021]