Employers' perceptions of importance-performance gaps in co-op students' technical marketing skills

Higher education is a pure service and is subject to greater variance than other services. Service quality is often measured via students yet employers are another customer of a universities output, that of the student’s knowledge. A number of studies have been conducted measuring employers views on the quality of students skills however these are mostly based on generic skills. Technical marketing skills on the other hand have not been researched to the same extent. A co-op student program was chosen as employers have dialogue with academics during this placement period. Traditional service quality measurement techniques often recognise perceptions and performance at the expense of importance of the service. This pilot study had two data collection methodologies. The first aimed to identify importance and performance of technical skills. Technical skills were derived from subject objectives as these should reflect technical skills. The second approach consisted of depth interviews with employer supervisors. The importance-performance grid findings indicate that many skills were around mid points, which is problematic given that these measures could fall into either quadrant. There were some skills that were definitely well within quadrants however with such a small sample the results are more for demonstration not learned discussion. Defining the grid dividers was also an issue which has been reported by other researchers.