Factors Affecting University Graduates’ Employability in Egypt Using Egyptian University Students as a Case Study

Employability refers to the process of gaining initial employment, maintaining employment, and successfully obtaining new employment if required. In simple terms, employability is about being capable of obtaining and keeping fulfilling work. Employability is having a set of skills, including knowledge, understanding, and personal attributes that make a person more likely to choose and secure occupations in which they can be satisfied and successful. Employability depends on knowledge (what you know), skills (what you do with what you know), and attitudes (how you approach things). In higher education, the employment of university graduates is influenced by many factors including institutional ranking, image, branding, and program structure. Therefore, university reputation in specific programs is important and affects the employability of graduates directly. In a recent paper by the corresponding author, we argued that university branding is critical for developing a favorable image and impacts one’s identity formation and promotion substantially, thus differentiating and placing one in a highly competitive context. In this paper, we will investigate the factors that influence employability among university graduates and determine which ones can affect the overall graduate employability of university graduates in Egypt. These factors include academic branding, academic performance, technical skills, communication skills, personality, leadership and motivational skills, and teamwork and problem-solving skills, taken as independent variables, while overall graduate employability was considered the dependent variable. In addition, we consider the impact of the university’s reputation on graduate employability. Survey methods were used on 500 graduates and undergraduates (fourth level) from different Egyptian universities who have not yet performed employability behavior, chosen at random, by using exploratory factor analysis to validate the items under those independent variables and structural equation modeling with AMOS to test the hypothesized relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable. The questionnaire had 20 questions, including demographic inquiries and questions about the abovementioned topics. The findings of this study can help scholars further investigate the employability aspects and guide fresh graduates in acquiring the required employability skills while assisting companies in recruiting suitable people with the required skills and performance.