A Study on Employer Requirements and Employment Need of Architectural Graduates at Liuzhou City Vocational College, China

The aim of this research is to understand the current situations related to employment problem of vocational college graduates majoring in Architecture at Liuzhou City Vocational College, China. To achieve this aim, three research questions were raised to guide the exploration, as follow: 1) what are skills and characteristics of the graduates, expected by the enterprises, 2) what are employment prospects of graduates, and 3) what are the reasons behind an unemployment of graduates after their graduation.

To collect data according to the research questions, firstly, semi-structure interview of HR managers from 12 large-scale construction, decoration, or design enterprises has been carried out to obtained their needs about skills and characteristics of graduates. Secondly, an online questionnaire has been admitted to 646 Architectural graduates, to survey their prospective job. Lastly, semi-interview were conducted on 53 graduates who have not been employed, to find out the reasons of unemployment.

The results obviously indicated that, in addition to basic construction skills, most enterprise expects the graduates to have experience in using CAD, BIM, CorelDRAW, PS software. Characteristics of the graduates, that are preferred by the enterprise, includes optimistic and outgoing personality, teamwork spirit, honesty, and willingness to learn. For graduate’s prospective employment, it was found that 29.3% of graduates wants to work in a joint venture enterprise, 23.7% wants to work in a cost controller position, 60.3% can accept salary in between 4,000 – 4,500 Yuan/month, and 48.6% requires to work in Liuzhou city. In addition, it was also found that 48.9% of graduates likes to participate in club activities in college, 49.3% tends to have good relation with classmates, 44.4% participates in physical exercise sometimes, and 64.5% of the graduates does not participate in sport competition. The reasons of unemployment of graduates after graduation includes 1) unwilling to work because of low wages and having good family support, 2) unclear employment preference and waiting to make decision, 3) high employment goal, but their skills do not meet the company requirement, 4) afraid of hard working, 5) continue to further education, and 6) prepare for civil servant entrance exam. The result of this research suggests that a systematic measure to enhance employability of higher vocational graduates in Architecture is needed.