Perceptions of employers on the employability of hospitality graduates in Gauteng Province, South Africa.

Abstract

The hospitality industry is a service industry; therefore, the role of personal service by employees is irreplaceable. There are frequent and intense face-to-face interactions or encounters between the service providers and customers. It is therefore important to have the right employees with the necessary skills and competence. The ability of graduates to develop proactively, adapt and repackage their capabilities is an essential aspect of employability. The study on which this article reports, investigated hospitality employers’ perspective of the skills, attributes or qualities they deem necessary to make a graduate employable. Employers of hospitality graduates represent the diverse stakeholders in the industry such as for example private enterprises (hotels, guest houses, lodges, restaurants) and public organisations (hospitals, correctional services, schools and the military). Therefore, a qualitative research design was deployed with semi-structured interviews to get in-depth data about their views on the subject matter. Data analysis was done with the use of a QDA software programme, ATLAS.ti. The interviews were transcribed and coded. Different themes emerged from the coded interviews and the themes were presented in the form of a network diagram. The findings about aspects that are essential are discussed.

Keywords

• Attributes
• competence
• employability
• service
• skills.