Challenges in the Era of Globalization - iaabd

Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference © 2011 IAABD
The table above shows that generic, social and personality skills are predicted by trait EI in that order of
importance. The table below presents regression results for the low and high trait student groups and
shows that trait EI predicts employability in the high mean group, unlike in the low mean group
Table 5: Employability as predicted by in low and high trait groups
N R2 t B p
High trait EI 109 .041 2.12 .201 .036**
Low trait EI 73 .007 .706 .083 .482
** Significant at 0.01 level 2 tailed
Discussion
First, this study utilizes data from two different sources hence the problem of common method bias does
not arise (Podsakoff et al., 2003). In phase one of the study it is established that there is no significant
difference between women and men students in their possession of non technical skills, consistent with
Korabik and Aymen (1988) who argue that the socialization process makes men and women at the same
level similar, thus HI was not supported. The scores of this sample of students on social skills were not
very high (e.g. negotiating skills mean 3.96 and dealing with conflict mean 3.70), and this is reflected
further by the fact that supervisors were only satisfied by thinking and personal skills. The fact that
personal skills were important in the view of the supervisors confirms that individual characteristics and
behavior determine employability (Clarke, 2007). Correlation analysis shows that thinking skills
(cognitive) are orthogonal to trait emotional intelligence, (p>.05) as expected. In this study the reasoning
is that problem solving skills as well as creativity and innovation are factors that border on the cognitive
side, and may not depend on how a person relates to others or recognizes their emotions. Thus going by
this analysis, it is not surprising that trait emotional intelligence is not correlated with thinking skills.
Unlike Mavroveli et al. (2007), phase two of the study establishes that women students have a higher
level of emotional intelligence than men students (p