Employability skills are primarily derived from the personal qualities and skills that one individual possess (Yorke, 2006). “Employability” doesn’t merely talk about attaining jobs (Atkins, 1999). It is about a set of achievements, skills, understandings and personal attributes that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy. The country has enough potential to deliver the needs of the global talent market, the strong employability challenge of the graduates became the bottleneck for India’s growth perspective including the graduates from veterinary science (Bourdieu, 1997). In order to negotiate an increasingly complex career terrain, graduates of veterinary science require sharpened skills in effectively managing their own careers and a strong assurance of their own capabilities (Jackson and Wilton, 2017). Appropriate career choice is reported to have greater attention in the world of work (Kulshrestha, 1979) and to choose any kind of career in any domain, employability skills are important. The modern society with its scientific and technological advancement, its division of labour and specialization of functions demand the fullest use of man power at all levels. Our pressing need today is to harness and broaden the ways and means of proper utilization of man power resources (Mattoo and Surga, 2007). Further, majority of the graduates preferred to work in India after completion of their graduation (Bharadwaja, 2017), but the companies here finds candidates with graduates with less employability skills. This problem can be addressed when students understand the importance of employability skills that are needed to get employment. The socio- economic and other demographic characteristics of graduates from veterinary science would certainly influence the perception of importance of personal qualities and skills.  Hence, the present study was undertaken with the objective of identifying the influence of socioeconomic and demographic variables in determining the perception of employability skills.

Materials and Method

It is an exploratory study. There were 50 students participated in the survey. All the students were randomly selected and the respondents were from final year of the under graduation and post-graduation from veterinary sciences. The questionnaire was prepared based on extensive literature review and from the Employability Skill Framework of Jackson and Chapmon’s (2012) and through a series of modifications by administering the questionnaire to experts. There were 20 attributes of personal qualities and 20 attributes of skills. The list of personal quality attributes used in the study were adaptability, ambitious, fit into culture, emotional intelligence, energetic, enthusiasm, hardworking, independence, initiative, integrity, loyalty, positive attitude in work, punctuality, receptiveness to training, respect for authority, responsibility, self-awareness, self-confidence, stress tolerance and willingness to learn. The list of skill attributes used in the study were sector specific skills, ability to work cross culturally, global awareness, team work, oral communication, reading effectiveness, writing skills, problem solving, conflict resolving, computer literacy, creativity, reasoning skills, critical analysis, decision making skills, ability to influence others, information retrieval, negotiating, numeracy, planning and self-management. The purpose was explained followed by discussion on their responses, which contributed towards developing the questionnaire. Against each of the attributes in personal qualities and skills, the respondents were asked to rate on a scale on 1 to 5 on the level of importance of personal qualities and skills. The survey for the study was conducted during the period of June 2014 to July 2014.

Descriptive statistics was to analyse the respondent’s socio-economic and demographic background characteristics. In order to understand the relationships between level of perception of personal qualities and skills and socio-economic background characteristics of respondents, multiple linear regression analysis was fitted. The following Multiple linear regression model was postulated with level of education, community, religion, type of family, fathers education, mothers education, class 10 board of instruction, class 10 medium of instruction, class 10 marks, class 12 board of instruction, class 12 medium of instruction, class 12 marks, B.V.Sc marks, first graduate or not and family income as independent variables as mentioned in Table 1.

Y₁ = α + β₁X₁ + β₂X₂ + β₃X₃ +β₄X₄ +β₅X₅ + β₆X₆ + β₇X₇ + β₈X₈ + β₉X₉ + β₁₀X₁₀ + β₁₁X₁₁ + β1₂X1₂ + β1₃X1₃ +β1₄X1₄ +μ

Y₂ = α + β₁X₁ + β₂X₂ + β₃X₃ +β₄X₄ +β₅X₅ + β₆X₆ + β₇X₇ + β₈X₈ + β₉X₉ + β₁₀X₁₀ + β₁₁X₁₁ + β1₂X1₂ + β1₃X1₃ +β1₄X1₄ +μ

Where,

Y_{1 =} Cumulative indicator score on level of importance of personal qualities

Y_{2 =} Cumulative indicator score on level of importance of skills

α = Intercept

β_i = Regression coefficients to be estimated and μ = stochastic disturbance term

Table 1: Definition of variables expected to influence the perception of importance of personal qualities and perception of importance of skills

Results and Discussion

Demographic Characteristic of Graduates of Veterinary Science  

The result of the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of veterinary science graduates is presented in Table 2.

Table 2: Demographic characteristic of graduates of veterinary science

The family size lies with a mean value of 4.32. The mean value of their parent’s education was found to be more or less equal in urban, semi urban and rural areas. The mean value of their parent’s education was about 12 years for father and 9 years for mother. The mean value of marks scored by the veterinary science graduates in class 10, class 12 and in B.V.Sc were more or less equal in rural, semi urban and urban areas The marks scored by the veterinary science graduates in class 10 and class 12 were in the range of 83 per cent and for B.V.Sc, the mark was in the range of 73 per cent. With regard to family income, the value was high in urban areas compared to semi urban and rural areas. The standard deviation for the variable family income of veterinary science graduates was high in urban areas indicating the income inequality among the families of urban areas.

Demographic and Socio-Economic Factors Affecting the Perception Score of Importance of Personal Qualities among Veterinary Science Graduates

The multiple linear regression technique was applied to explore the effects of the socio-economic and demographic variables on the perception of importance of personal qualities and the results were presented in Table 3.

Table 3: Demographic and Socio-economic factors affecting the personal qualities of veterinary science graduates

The adjusted co-efficient of determination (Adjusted R²) was found to be 0.726, indicating that 72.60 per cent of variations in the dependent variable is explained by the independent variables. The F value (8.297) was also found to be significant at 1 per cent level. The variables religion, class 10 medium of instruction and first graduate in family had a significant positive relationship (at 5 per cent level) with the cumulative perception score of importance of personal qualities. It indicates that people belonging to Hindu religion, English as their medium of instruction in class 10 and those who are first graduates from their family showed the higher perception on importance of personal qualities. This is because, the students of class 10 with English as medium of instruction develop a sense of self confidence over their achievements and skills, thus ensuring them to perceive the importance of personal qualities at a higher level when compared with their counter parts i.e. class 10 medium of instruction in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi languages. It is more evident that the first graduates in veterinary science degree programme have an intrinsic feeling for better achievement both in their academic and non-academic qualities. This made them to perceive the importance of personal qualities relatively at a higher level when compared with the second and third level graduates.

The variables like type of family, class 10 board of instruction and class 12 board of instruction had a significant negative relationship (at 1 per cent level) with the cumulative perception score of importance of personal qualities. The parents of the students from nuclear family may invest much in their children’s education because of their financial surplus rather than the students from joint family and hence students from nuclear family, already developed personal qualities and skills perceive the importance of personal qualities negatively whereas students from joint families perceive it positively. Result also clearly reveals that the students with Central board of secondary education as their board of instruction did perceive the importance of personal qualities negatively whereas students from state board of instruction perceive the importance of personal qualities positively.

Demographic and Socio-Economic Factors Affecting the Perception Score of Importance of Skill Qualities among Veterinary Science Graduates

The multiple linear regression technique was applied to explore the effects of the socio-economic and demographic variables on the perception of importance of skills and the results are presented in Table 4.

Table 4: Demographic and Socio-economic factors affecting the perception of skills of veterinary science graduates

The adjusted co-efficient of determination (adjusted R²) was found to be 0.636, which indicated that 63.60 per cent of variations in the dependent variable were explained by the independent variables. The F value (5.796) was also found to be significant at 1 per cent level.

The variables like level of education, type of family and class 10 marks had a significant positive relationship (at 1 per cent level) with the cumulative perception score of importance of skills. This indicates that graduates educated at higher level, from nuclear family and who have scored high in class 10 have perceived the high perception on importance of skills positively. The variables like class 10 board of instruction and class 12 board on instruction had a significant negative relationship (at 1 per cent level) with the cumulative perception score of importance of skills which indicates that students from state board of instruction gives high perception score on importance of skills than Central board of secondary education students.

Conclusion

The study was carried out to assess the factors affecting the perception of importance of personal and skills, indicated that 72.60 per cent of variations in the perception of importance of personal qualities and 63.60 per cent of variations in the perception of importance of skill were explained by the chosen demographic and socio-economic factors of Veterinary Science graduates. Students with English as medium of instruction in their schooling developed a sense of self confidence over their achievements and skills thus ensured them to perceive the importance of personal qualities at a higher level when compared with the graduates who have chosen their native languages as the medium of instruction. Further, graduates who had their schooling under state board of education perceive the importance of both personal quality attributes and skill attributes positively but the graduates who had their schooling under central board of secondary education perceive the personal qualities negatively and skill quality attributes positively.

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