Employers’ Perspectives On Diploma Supplement To Enhance Graduate Employability

Abstract

The youth unemployment rate remains high in Indonesia. Many unemployed youths are facing few job opportunities and are more likely to accept employment that is not well matched to their skills. The Indonesian government designed the Indonesian Qualification Frameworks (IQFs) to improve the quality and competitiveness of national education and skill formation to meet the business needs. Refers to IQFs, the government has set up national education standards and made this information publicly available by issuing a diploma supplement for graduates. This document issued to provide information about graduates learning outcomes includes attitudes, knowledge, and their general and specific skills of graduate competency standards. This research explores employers’ perspectives on diploma supplement to examine the effectiveness in providing transparency of graduate competencies for increasing graduate employability. For further analysis, we collected data by conducting semi-structured interviews with 16 employer representatives from Yogyakarta. The findings show mismatch skills have less found in the hotel and telecommunication industries rather than manufactured and retail sectors since many hotels and a telecommunication company have implemented competency-based for their employees that it affects better job performances. Therefore, the employers do agree a diploma supplement helps to discover new graduates’ competencies and will enhance their employability