The Importance of Employability Competence for Graduates to Work in Tourism Sector

Abstract

Research background. Reality of everyday life requires from a young person continual improvement, competitiveness and efficiency in striving for goals needed at work. Employers are increasingly demanding results “faster, better, cheaper”. The main goal of higher education institutions is to prepare good and motivated specialists. Increasing migration of youth, among them the most qualified professionals, to foreign countries has shown that a large part of the workers are not prepared for employment and work in Lithuania (Čepas, 2008a). Thus, employability competence is becoming a more important issue. Previous research results showed that there was no clear opinion about the concept of employability competence, which skills, abilities, personal qualities and knowledge are needed that young people could realize themselves in the world of labour. The first part of article discussed the concept of employability competence, employability competence structure / content, typology and the most important factors conditioning the graduates’ employability competence. Employability competence is defined as “skills, personal qualities and values that must be acquired by all graduates regardless of their direction of study subjects (HEC, 1992). According to the author (Čepas, 2008) employability competence is explained as ability to chose a workplace, ability of preparing for work activities, employment and ability to save this job based on the knowledge, skills, abilities and values as a whole. Generalization structure of employability competence needs to emphasize the choice of workplace, to acquire and have special abilities to adapt in the workplace. Graduates’ employability competence is largely determined by students, employers and higher education institutions’ interaction and collaboration. Therefore, in the scientific literature we can find a lot of discussion about the graduates’ employability competence. The object of the survey was the importance of employability competencies for employment. The aim of the survey was to analyse the importance of employability competencies for graduates’ employment in tourism sector. Research methods. In order to be more aware of the importance of graduates’ employability competence in the tourism sector, two quantitative studies were carried out. The first study was done with students in tourism studies and the second one – with the employers of tourism organizations. The study data were processed using the methods of mathematical statistics. Research results. Rresearch results showed that the employability competence of graduates in accordance with their gained specialization in the tourism sector is a most important skill among personal abilities and personal characteristics.

Keywords: employability, employability competencies, tourism sector.