Bridging the Skills Divide: How Competencies and Personal Attributes Shape the Employability of Management Graduates in Bengaluru

Abstract: In today's dynamic business environment, employers have been increasingly saying that they feel management graduates lack the necessary competencies and personal qualities needed to cope in the modern workplace but have good theoretical knowledge. This paper studies the effect of managerial, communication, analytical, digital and leadership competency along with personal, interpersonal and adaptability attributes on employability of management graduates in Bengaluru. The design was the qualitative and descriptive-analytical type, and the subjects were 520 respondents, such as management graduates, faculty members, and industry recruiters from the various departments of university institutions, autonomous institutions, and private business schools. The data was gathered by structured questionnaires with five-point Likert scales with validated items. The reliability was confirmed (for the composite scale Cronbach's alpha was 0.93). Pearson correlation, multiple regression and one-way ANOVA were used to test the hypotheses. The digital competency (dimensions 1; β = 0.27) and adaptability attributes (dimensions 9; β = 0.22) were the strongest predictors of employability, and all dimensions of competency and attribute were significantly and positively related with employability. The relationship between competencies and attributes was found to explain 64.9% of the variance in employability (R² = 0.649, p < 0.001). The three groups of stakeholder participants had significant perceptual differences in their perceptions of graduate employability, with recruiters perceiving lower graduate employability than graduates saw themselves. The study adds to the literature on graduate employability, and provides implications for curriculum design, pedagogy, and the working relationship between industry and academia.

Keywords: Employability, managerial competency, graduate attributes, management education, stakeholder perception, business schools, Bengaluru.