Do new business graduates have the computing skills expected by employers?

Computers have become ubiquitous. Most households have access to a computer and certainly schools from kindergarten to university give their students the use of computers and other technology on a daily basis. The high prevalence of computer use may lead employers to assume university graduates will have good computing skills. Such assumptions may be the reason that employers use broad terms to advertise the computing tasks required for graduate-level positions. This paper investigates how well the expectations of employers match the perceptions of senior students about their computer skills. Four graduate-level positions seeking to attract recent graduates with business degrees were identified from advertisements. The employers who were responsible for the writing of these advertisements were surveyed by interview and questionnaire. Twenty-one senior students about to graduate from a university business studies programme were also interviewed and surveyed. Results showed that the wording used in the advertisements did not clearly articulate the requirements and intentions of the employers. Results also show that the senior students, while about to enter the workforce, had little idea of the end-user computing that would be required of them and that the perceptions they had of their own computing skill frequently did not meet the expectations held by employers. This study highlights implications for three groups: employers, graduates and educators.