Core Competencies for Business Graduates Embark on the Economic Clusters of Saudi Arabia

The core competencies are the attributes, skills, and knowledge that employees across an organization are expected to have to contribute successfully within a particular organizational context. The business graduates are the fresh and young citizens, who graduate from various undergraduate business programs that are offered at the private and public higher education institutions. The Economic system of Saudi Arabia has been classified into three major clusters namely 1) Services sector, 2) Industrial Sector, and 3) Public Sector. These sectors are the potential employment providers for the business graduates in the nation; and they individually include several industries within. The actual number of competencies an organization may choose to use varies widely from one organization to the other. Some examples of competencies organizations might use would be i.e. communication skills; interpersonal skills; analytical and critical thinking skills, business acumen; emotional stability; information technology skills; and work ethics. These competencies can be further classified into three broad categories namely (i) personal attributes, (ii) professional skills, and (iii) business disciplinary knowledge. How the employee competency is defined should be determined by how each organization chooses to define it to fit its current work culture. The primary purpose of the study is two-fold. Firstly, the purpose is to amass the core competencies in a list; and secondly, is to help develop and inculcate such competencies in future graduates through an effective academic program to enable their employability in the economic clusters of the nation. The research used both qualitative and quantitative research methods to collect empirical data. A major emphasis is placed onto find out whether any idiosyncratic skills or knowledge that the graduates require to possess to perform well in the economic clusters of Saudi Arabia. The research findings indicated that an array of core competencies including certain eccentric skills specific to the Saudi Arabian culture are required for the business graduates. Moreover, findings of the research study will be used by business schools in the process of reviewing, updating and enriching their curriculum.