Skill Gaps as a Stumbling Block to Economic Development: A Study of Trilateral Perspective

Abstract

To explore one of the constraints to economic development, this study aims to identify skill gaps in management students on the basis of various employability skills. This paper also seeks to examine the difference in perception of student, faculty and HR professionals regarding employability skills. Having cross-sectional research design, this study focuses on trilateral perspective of three respondent groups on seven employability skills using a self-administered questionnaire with 34 items. Reliability and validity of the proposed scale was established with cronbach’s alpha, convergent and discriminant validity.  Descriptive and inferential statistics was used to analyze the data through Kruskal-Wallis test and DSCF (multi group analysis). The finding of this research shows a considerable difference in the perception of student, faculty and HR respondents. The study provides practical utility to student, faculty, HR recruiters, policy makers and career counselors. This is a comprehensive study having triangular approach with established psychometric properties of scale and multi group analysis for skill gap measurement.