Other Economics Commons^™

Over Qualified And Under Experienced – Turning Graduates Into Hospitality Managers, Michael Raybould, Hugh Wilkins

Michael Raybould

Purpose – This paper sets out to report on research that investigated hospitality managers' expectations of graduate skills and compared those expectations with student perceptions of what hospitality managers value. Design/methodology/approach – The research adopted a generic skills framework and data were collected through a sample survey of 850 Australian hospitality managers and 211 undergraduate hospitality management students. Findings – Managers rated skills associated with interpersonal, problem solving, and self-management skill domains as most important while students appeared to have realistic perceptions of the skills that managers value when recruiting hospitality graduates. The most substantial areas of disagreement came in …