Graduates' employability: enhancing soft skills through student-led volunteering activities in a University.

Abstract

Higher education institutions worldwide have recognized countless benefit of volunteering towards graduate’s skill development. Besides, improving student’s morality and civil responsibility, volunteering had help to develop essential soft skills and prepare them for future career. In Thailand, many higher education institutes develop policy and practice to increase number of students in the community services activities and student-led volunteering activities. The policy received both positive and negative criticism as many educators believe in order to develop skills for students the volunteering projects should be in a form of voluntarily basic rather than to meet university’s requirement. Furthermore, not all students perceive their working experience in student-led volunteering organization as an approach to develop employability skills. It is so unfortunately that such a meaningful experience that students invest their time and energy for, can benefit to certain group of student. In order to provide evident-based support for the benefit of student-led volunteering activities towards the extent of graduates’ employability, this research aims to examine what are the soft skills that students and graduates can gain through their participation in volunteering activities and to identify appropriate learning approach to develop their soft skills effectively in future. The research applied qualitative methodology to gain in-depth information and found that student able to develop key skills even they have limited experience to design effective learning process through volunteering activities. The paper offer in-depth information on the factors that influence effective learning process as well as recommend approaches that the university, policy makers and student-led volunteering organizations can work collaboratively to improve the experiential learning process to enhance graduates’ soft skills and prepare them to be ready for future employment.