EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS AND EMPLOYER SATISFACTION WITH FRESH ENGINEERING GRADUATES

The purpose of this research paper is to understand the role of employability skills and emotional intelligence toward employer satisfaction in recruiting fresh information technology engineering graduates from institutions of higher learning in India. Using a structured questionnaire, the study surveyed 507 employers from the information technology sector companies in India, who as recruiters conduct campus placement drives across various engineering schools in the country. An application of structured equation modeling to the data revealed emotional Intelligence partially mediates in the relationship between employability skills and employer satisfaction while recruiting these fresh engineering IT graduates. The finding of the study will be supportive for the students, academicians and practitioners in recognizing the need of soft skills for making young engineering graduates employable.