Management skills are amongst the skills sought after by many employers. Producing graduates who possess skills/attributes beyond their course-related skills is critical in contributing towards the employability of graduates. Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) has a mission to develop well-rounded engineering and technology graduates who not only possess technical competence, but also other employability skills to meet the requirements of the industry. The extent to which the university is preparing students on management skills is rather unexplored. This exploratory study therefore intends to fill the gap by examining the level of management skills possessed by UTP interns during their 8-month internship training at various companies in Malaysia. To get a better perspective on the issue studied, feedback was gathered from both the interns and their internship supervisors at the respective companies. Data collection was conducted from Jun - July 2008 during the final week of the internship period. A total of 96 respondents (48 interns and 48 supervisors) participated in the study. The findings suggested that, in general, the interns possessed moderately high management skills. Implications of the findings and avenues for further research are also discussed in this study. © Common Ground, Azrai Abdullah, Rohani Salleh, Subarna Sivapalan.
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