Examining Pre-Internship Expectations among Employers on the Students’ Characteristics and Internship Program: The Empirical Study of Malaysian Government-Linked Company’s University

This study attempts to investigate the what the employers expect on the students’ characteristics and the internship program itself, before the internship period. It also would like to measure whether there are significant differences between the demographic factors of employers and their expectations about the students’ characteristics and the internship program. The primary data collection was through self-administered questionnaires which were distributed to a sample of 134 firm employers of 165 students that provide internship training in their workplace to the final year accounting students. Factor analysis and multivariate ANOVA have been employed in order to meet the objectives of the study. The results reveal that there are three (3) dimensions underpinning for each scale of students’ characteristics and the internship itself which are the employers expecting before the accounting undergraduates undergoing for the internship period. Most of the employers ranked the future career development as the most important and relevant to the undergraduates to secure for future employment. Further, some significant differences between demographic factors of employers and the dimensions of employers’ expectation are identified and discussed.