MALAYSIAN ENTRY LEVEL CONSTRUCTION MANAGERS GENERIC COMPETENCY: MISMATCH BETWEEN INDUSTRIES REQUIREMENT AND CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT STUDENTS’ EXPECTATION

Construction management graduates having difficulty in finding employment has been identified as a well-known problem in Malaysia. The justification for this has been argued as an upcoming issue in industries when they keep changing their employment requirements. This study aimed to identify the mismatch between industry requirement and students' perception towards the Malaysian entry-level construction managers’ generic competency and determine why this mismatch exist. A sequential explanatory research design is adopted for this study, which employed a 360° survey using a 5 Likert scale questionnaire and a semi-structured interview template. In this study, entry-level construction managers refer to the construction management fresh graduates from the Malaysian Public Universities. A total of 94 construction practitioners represent the contractors (grade 5 to 7 in the Klang Valley area) and 153 construction management final semester, students from Malaysian Public Universities (UiTM, USM, and UTHM) participated in this study. Data were analyzed using Rasch Model. The result from the data analysis shows 15 of the generic competency elements required by industry were difference expected by the construction management students. Moreover, the semi-structured interview result suggested that the mismatch exists due to the students’ attitude towards their studies, lack of industrial or site experience among lecturers and less opportunity for students to experience on-site work during their internship. These research findings will be useful in assisting the universities and industries to improve the generic competency amongst construction management students by providing valuable insight and expanding current knowledge-base of those mismatch elements between industry and graduates.