What types of ability do employers expect to graduates?

Abstract

Preferences of employers have critical roles to determine job-matching processes between the university graduates and the employers. Some researches show that the employers expect self-directedness to the graduates, but these results are only based on the sample of very large companies. This study investigates what types of ability employers demand from graduates, with a special focus on the differences among sizes of companies. Our data are collected from job-search website for new graduates in 2016, and consist of 20,859 companies including large and small companies. We analyze the descriptions obtained from the companies using topic modeling. The results show that large companies and small ones expect different abilities to the graduates. Large companies tend to expect self-directedness and entrepreneurial spirit to graduates. This is consistent with previous studies. By contrast, small companies tend to demand discipline and aggressiveness. These findings suggest that previous studies have overlooked the trends of small companies.