Flash Eurobarometer 304 (Employers’ Perception of Graduate Employability)

Employment and employability of higher education graduates. Skills assessment. Cooperation with higher education institutions.<br>Topics: 1. Employment of graduates: percentage of higher education graduates in the company; most represented educational fields.

2. Skills: skills assessment with regard to job requirements; importance of selected skills regarding recruitment of higher education graduates: good with numbers, good reading and writing skills, foreign language skills, computer skills, sector specific skills, communication skills, analytical and problem solving skills, ability to adapt to new situations, decision-making skills, team-working skills, planning and organisational skills; satisfaction with recruited graduates in terms of the aforementioned skills; most required level of graduate; awareness of the difference between bachelor’s and master’s degree; kind of training activities of higher education graduates in the company: in-house, short courses in universities or other higher education institutions, part-time study programmes in universities or other higher education institutions, training in educational institutions, distance learning, other; percentage of employees with higher education degrees in training activities in the last two years.

3. Recruitment: importance of selected factors with regard to the recruitment of graduates: anticipated growth, actual growth, higher turnover of staff, increasing complexity of tasks, higher number of applicants; percentage of higher education graduates recruited from other EU countries and from countries outside the EU; reasons for (not) recruiting graduates from outside the own country; importance of the following skills: work experience, studies abroad, internship abroad.

4. Filling of vacancies: most important challenges.

5. Cooperation with higher education institutions: frequency of cooperation with regard to curriculum design and study programmes; importance of these cooperations; frequency of cooperation with regard to graduate recruitment; best ways of cooperation; preferred actions of higher education institutions in order to improve graduate employability.

Demography: number of employees; recruitment of higher education graduates in the last five years and / or considerations to do so in the next five years; ownership structure; main activity of the company; percentage of day-to-day operations dealing with people in or from other countries; position of respondent at the company.

Additionally coded was: interview ID; interviewer ID; language of the interview; country; date of interview; time of the beginning of the interview; duration of the interview; type of phone line; call history; weighting factor.