The relationship between engineer skill ability toward employer satisfaction moderated by employer impression

This study investigates the skills required by industrial sector employers for entry-level jobs and attempts to investigate the factors pertaining to the valuable skills that influence the employability of new engineering graduates. This study investigates these factors from various aspects to establish what employers expect of their newly hired engineering employees and seeks to find out if there are any differences in the perception among employers regarding the skills and employability of engineering graduates at industrial community. Employers consider certain skills as top priority before they decide to employ, sometimes, the nature of industries will determine the types of skills needed. This study used simple random sampling to select respondents that comprised senior managers from manufacturing companies in Malaysia,
chosen from the 2015 Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers' (FMM) Directory. Questionnaires distributed to senior managers and researcher was able to collect data from 195 respondents with the response rate of 41%. The data was then cleaned of missing values and tested for normality. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPPS) version 22 was employed to measure the research hypotheses. The findings indicate that, in order to be hired, engineering graduates must be equipped with skills. Fundamental general skills, engineering skills and self-emotional intelligence skills are among the skills found to be valuable. Findings also demonstrate that the employers' impression is highly moderated the relationship between engineering and self-emotional intelligence skills. This study has identified two new scalars of
Personality Skill and Behavioral Skill that hopefully could contribute to the academic world.