Employability Skill Factors in Retail Vocational Education: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

Skills and knowledge are the driving force for economic growth and social development of any country. The economy becomes productive, innovative and competitive through the existence of a skilled human potential. The biggest challenge Indian education currently faces, is that of a skill gap in the context of academic, technical, and employability skills of the students. Employability skills consist of non-technical skills that can be transferred into different fields of work which are required for entering the working world or to remain in the job, as well as developing a career in the workplace, or for career development at a new place of work. This research is aimed to validate the student perspective for employability skills in vocational education in the retail sector through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) technique. The retail vocational education students were surveyed to validate the CFA model through a structured questionnaire. The CFA model enables us to identify the various factors responsible for enhancing employability skills of the retail vocational education students. The final model identified three major factors, Interpersonal skills (IPS), Integrating Theory & Practice (ITP) and Learning Skills (LS) that affect employability.