SAM ADVANCED MANAGEMENT JOURNAL

Volume 85 Edition 2

Volume 85 Edition 2 | Spring 2020

Preparing Career-Ready Graduates: Expectations for Academy to Enhance Student Success and Assist Business Employers

Maria L. Bullen, Gregory S. Kordecki, and Elizabeth D. Capener

This paper examines the effectiveness of business schools in preparing students to be career ready at the conclusion of their studies. The paper’s thesis suggests that academic-practitioner nexus and collaboration is essential for students to be career-ready. The authors’ review of literature on career readiness identifies key features that appear to work well. The authors also offer positive suggestions that emerged from their respective institutions that make for efficient and effective employment. Activities and strategies that have not served the market well are also discussed. Are business schools’ stated learning outcomes and competencies appropriate for today’s labor market? The paper concludes with recommendations that are likely to be successful for both the academy and practice going forward for the next decade.

Competency Assessment and Fortitude for Lifelong Learning: The Study among Graduate Students and Higher Educational Institutions

Lakshmipriya Soundararajan, P. Rajan, and S. Sharmila Priya

Learning is a lifelong process beyond the tradition of compulsory education which is self-directed and autonomous. Lifelong learning is an indispensable challenge for inventing the potentials of our societies. In this current scenario, lifelong learning is recognized by educators, research institutions, corporate, organizations, governing bodies, certification bodies, society and general public. Today’s graduate students are flooded with prevalence of high technology which self-directs them for long lasting and deep-rooted learning. Higher educational institutions face challenges to rethink, redesign and reinvent their pedagogies / andragogy in transforming students towards lifelong learning perspectives. This current research develops the literature and discusses the competency assessment of key aspects from graduates like valuing learning, ensuring basic skills, ability of the learners and transformational knowledge. The higher educational institutions focused in this research to accord the fortitude of bringing learners and learning opportunities together, introduction of technological and innovative pedagogy which recognize the context of continuing learning among graduates for continual professional development.

Career Competencies for Collaborative Growth of Universities and Industries

D. Henry Kishore

The students pursuing Higher Education in this liberalized, modernized and globalized world are required to fulfill and exhibit certain competencies in order to prosper in their switch over to the workplace. This requirement to fulfill and exhibit competencies sums up what is popularly known as the “Career Readiness”, which is of pivotal importance in Higher Education, in the job market, and in the public sphere as well. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) situated in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania which provides a lot of resources on Career Readiness that leaves one mind boggled with their findings. The recent researches clearly lay down the fact that the Higher Education Institutions worldwide are way behind in meeting the current challenges of the job market. The Employers demand a whole set of new “Soft Skills” that are quite different from the ones thought of in the conventional manner. This conference Paper entitled Career Competencies for Collaborative Growth of Universities and Industries would highlight the ways and means to make career ready students through a better collaboration of universities and industries by developing an effective curriculum for the challenging future. The competent graduate produced by the University must be able think critically, solve problems skillfully and should be able to communicate well orally as well as by writing and he or she should be able to collaboratively work in teams with the latest digital technology and be a leader with high professional and work ethics managing his or her career along with the others in a multicultural environment.

Career Readiness: Piloting a Successful Program in a College of Business

Margaret A. Thompson and Crystal Butler

Employers want employees who are career ready. “Career readiness” is the extent to which an individual is perceived to possess the necessary attributes and attitudes that would allow him or her to be successful in the workforce (Doe, 2015). Employers are seeing a gap between the skills they need their employees to have and those held by college graduate applicants. They want to hire college graduates who have the necessary skills to perform effectively in the job, not those who just have a degree (Cappelli, 2014). Universities need to intentionally prepare students who are “career ready.” The purpose of this paper is to review the implementation of the “Career Spine,” a career development model piloted in a business school at a medium-sized regional university in the Southeastern United States. This program embeds required career readiness activities and assessments into eight core courses within the business school undergraduate curriculum. This paper will present how the program was designed, the success measures established, and the impact this program had on the students’ “career readiness.” Additionally, the authors will make recommendations for future successful career development models.

Long-Term Benefits of Student-Centered Experiential Learning in an MBA Quantitative Decision Analysis Course

Mohammad Ahmadi, Parthasarati Dileepan, and Marilyn M. Helms

This paper describes a student-centered experiential learning component within an MBA- level quantitative decision analysis course where student teams completed research projects in which they applied theoretical model-building and data analysis to ‘real-world’ business problems. An end-of-course survey of students’ opinions over multiple semesters regarding the experiential learning component of the course showed most students were “satisfied” to “very satisfied.” A content analysis of open-ended comments revealed additional themes. Positive learning outcomes included the following themes: (1) the link between the classroom theory and real-world applications and practice, (2) the impact on career and education choices, (3) improved teamwork skills, and (4) enhanced research skills. Steps for implementation are included following the discussion along with areas for future research.