EMPLOYERS’ PERCEPTION ON THE EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS OF BUILDING TECHNOLOGY GRADUATES IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

DANTONG, DANG GYANG and Covenant, University (2020) EMPLOYERS’ PERCEPTION ON THE EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS OF BUILDING TECHNOLOGY GRADUATES IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY. Masters thesis, COVENANT UNIVERSITY.

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Abstract

This research study reports on the required employability skills as perceived by professional employers of Building Technology graduates in the construction industry. As a guide to a practical study, four research questions were formulated and resolved which include the identification of the required employability skills of Building Technology graduates by various types of organisations' employers, the examination of major firm size employer's perception on the important employability skills required of Building Technology graduate, exploration of the methods used by professional employers in recruiting Building Technology graduates and finally the determination of factors affecting the employment of Building Technology graduates in the construction industry. Data for this study were collected with the aid of structured questionnaires and distributed to two hundred and fourth (240) professional employers in the construction industry ranging from client, consultancy, construction and design organisations which are small, medium or large firms in the construction industry. Only one hundred and ninety-three (193) questionnaires representing 80.4% of the total distributed were retrieved and found useful. The data obtained from the retrieved questionnaires were computed with the aid of SPSS (Version 25.0). Subsequently, the data collected for this research were analysed descriptive statistics (means, percentages and frequencies) and means of dispersion (standard deviation, range and variance) were used to summarise the features of the collected data. Principal component factor analysis and a VARIMAX rotation technique were used to generate the factors underlying forty-two (42) attributes. The Eigenvalues which were greater than one suggested a two-factor solution explained 69.2% of the cumulative variance. Factor 1 was identified as the most significant factor that explained 52.34% of the cumulative variance, and factor 2 explained 16.86% of the variance. Also, Cronbach's Alpha value was assessed to ascertain how reliable each factor is. The results revealed that the Cronbach's Alpha values of all the seven factors ranged from 0.66 to 0.82, which are obviously above the minimum value of 0.50, indicating the reliability of the factors. Four hypotheses were formulated and analysed using one-way ANOVA. All the hypotheses formulated for this study were tested at a 0.05 level of significance. The results found that the most important employability skill required of Building Technology graduates in the construction industry is "interpretation of building drawing' with a mean score of 4.8187. This indicates that professional employers positively expect Building Technology graduates to know how to interpret building drawings in any given project. It was also found that the most used method of recruitment by employers in the construction industry is through ‘Internet/Social media advertisements’ with a mean score of 4.0622. The study also revealed that ‘Technical know-how/Qualification of applicants’ has a very significant influence on the employability of Building Technology graduates in the construction industry. It was recommended that Building Technology graduates should get themselves acquainted with the skill of ‘Interpreting Building Drawings’ and position themselves to acquire more and better employability skills by attending 'Career Workshops/Seminars' which exposes them to the nature of the professional workplace in boosting their chances of being gainfully employed and efficient in the construction industry.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Building Technology graduates, construction industry, employability skills, professional employers.
Subjects:	T Technology > T Technology (General) T Technology > TH Building construction
Divisions:	Faculty of Engineering, Science and Mathematics > School of Engineering Sciences
Depositing User:	Mrs Hannah Akinwumi
Date Deposited:	02 Jun 2021 16:00
Last Modified:	02 Jun 2021 16:00
URI:	http://eprints.covenantuniversity.edu.ng/id/eprint/14330

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