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There are many challenges faced by the graduates of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in getting themselves employed. One of which is the lack of soft skills which is directly related to employability. Thus improving the soft skills means increasing the graduate’s opportunity to be employed. As such, employability of HEI graduates is one of the key agendas of the Ministry of Education (MOE). The objective of this paper is two prongs. First, is to highlight the scenario of Islamic Studies Graduates (ISGs) career and employability status after they have graduated from the Public Universities (PUs). The second, is to identify the elements of soft skills of these graduates who are employed in industry unrelated to their academic qualification. The first objective is achieved by obtaining data of both job career and employability rate of five PUs that offered Islamic Studies Programmes (ISPs). The data obtained from Univerisity Sains Islam Malaysia’s (USIM’s) career unit and Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin’s (UniSZA’s) alumini were collected and analyzed descriptively. The second objective is achieved by interviewing the personnel of the organizations who employ these graduates. The data of the interviews will be transcribed and analyzed qualitatively by using Atlas. The first objective is achieved through two parts of the finding. The first part revealed that 40% of USIM’s ISGs are employed in the professional and educational job. The other part of the finding interestingly revealed that out of five ISPs offered by PUs, UniSZA’s two ISPs which Degree in Education (Islamic Studies) and Degree in Education (Primary Studies) achieved a 100% employability for two consecutive years, 2015 and 2016. This finding concur with study conducted by Aini, Azizi and Yahya (2002); Fasan, Marcon, (2018). Besides the existing elements of soft skills crafted by the MOE, the finding of second objective is expected to reveal new emerging themes of ISGs soft skills. These themes are the elements that will form the structure of soft skills of the ISGs for PUs in Malaysia. It is expected that these soft skills would provide profound insight to researchers and educators alike what specific soft skills that ISG should have or acquire before they graduate from HEIs, especially in the PUs. Thus, it is envisaged that the new structure of soft skills could perhaps be a guiding principles during the process of relooking and redesigning the current curriculum for ISPs offered at the Malaysian HEIs. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences Vol. 9 , No. 11, November, 2019, E-ISSN: 2222-6990 © 2019 HRMARS 866 Keyword: Employability, Soft Skills, Islamic Studies Graduates, Public Universities, Higher Educaton Institutions, Islamic Studies Programs, Ministry Of Education Introduction In the previous studies many researchers have proved that employability is one of the indicators to assess graduates ability to get a job immediately after they have completed their studies at the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). One of these studies was by Hillage and Pollard (1999) where both of them considered employability as the function of an individual's asset and quality to gain from beginning employment, and conserve employment. It also means moving to the roles within the similar organization, acquire new employment if available, fasten and adequately fulfilling job satisfaction (Hillage & Pollard, 1999). The other study was by Thomsen (2009), where he emphasized that the skill differences are applicable for the labour gap but the long term changes on an unemployed person through the development of human capital is very limited. Although it is absolutely necessary to debate or discourse on the condition of the labor market, employability is still subjected to measure the ability for a person to be employed or otherwise (Thomsen, 2009). Therefore, it is of an ultimate importance that individual factors or skills required to measure the ability of HEI graduate to get a job should be given the right attention. However, the academic reputation still is not indicator for graduates to be hired if their soft skills are still at the lowest level of quality (Singh & Singh, 2008; ). Definitions and Concepts of Employability Definitions of Employability In the 2012, Ministry of Higher of Education (MOHE), Malaysia launched the guideline of The National Graduate Employability Blueprint 2012-2017. This blueprint defined two important terms, namely employment and employability. In other words, MOHE definition of employability was based on literature suggesting the capabilities and effort of being marketable in the industry to fulfilling a job or career. Other researcher, for example Knight (2003) defined employability as an effort which was established by individual in term of achievements, understandings, personal attributes to being employed and success in job career. However, Hillage and Pollard (1999) defined employability on how people are able to gain initial job, retain it, and acquire new employment. The Concept of Employability The concept of employability can be considered by two perspectives, which is individual factor (attributes and skills) and personal circumstances (Hillage & Pollard, 1999; Mcquaid & Lindsay, 2005). It can also be further considered as a barrier for someone to apply or select a better job offered. According to UNESCO Bangkok (2012), the concept of employability refer to several situation such as competencies, job related competencies that makes arrangement to work, effort to develop individual career and attributes. The other concept of employability is from the employer’s perception and interest to measure the employability of a person will be based on psychological terms if the employee profile is known (UNESCO Bangkok, 2012). For example, good personality in social or interpersonal compatibility will give good perception from employer’s side in term of dealing and rewarding these particular employees. As such, the result of employability depends on how to improve this stated personality. Employee’s employability and employer’s perception will be dynamic, if the abilities, expertise and the success in completing the assigned tasks is known. Thus, the International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences Vol. 9 , No. 11, November, 2019, E-ISSN: 2222-6990 © 2019 HRMARS 867 ambition, work, ethic and the drive for an employee to work with commitment and accountability can develop a quality completed job. Soft Skills The finding from the study by Mahesh Kumar.K.R and Santhosh Kumar A.V (2016) revealed that the factor that influences employability among B-School graduates’ soft skills are, individual competency and the ability to improve personal qualities. It is this soft skills that are required in order to get employed. This similar result is also supported by Nilsson (2010), where the qualities of graduates will be determine by acquiring employability’s two skills, which are soft and hard skills. Skill differences among employees are the employability gap, whereby the number of unemployment can be reduced through employee actively engaged in employment programs (Thomsen, 2009; Azmy & Zain, 2018). The impact of employee’ soft skills on employability is relevant measure because most of researcher agreed soft skills can act as a tool or instrument to increase the abilities, competencies and qualities of personality. It is these skills that develop the employee future career. Comparison between Soft Skills and Hard Skills Soft skills are defined as a set of ability, knowledge and experience that enable someone to do something until it is perfect (Boyatzis & Kolb, 1995). It can also be referred to as the personal ability that enable a person to touch or grasp the personality attributes, interacting politely in social situations, language, habits, affability, and mark people at every degree of interaction (Alex, 2009; Verma, 2013). Soft skills can also defined as the process of life involvement such as communication, making decision, solving problems and other related activities. On the other hand, hard skills focused on the technical knowledge that are easier to acquire such as certificate, diploma, degree, vocational skill and others (Mackey & Tonkin, 2005), Verma (2013) mentioned vividly that the relationship between softskills and hardskills. Soft skills are related to sociological term which refer to the behaviour or society that influence the ability while hard skills are acquired technically through the industries’ demand. Soft skills are also skills acquire from the individual behavior whereby the strength of the personality can be developed from experience (Aquila et al. 2017). Nitin Bhatnagar and Mamta Bhatnagar (2011) defined soft skills and hard skills differently. Hard skills are addressed as technical abilities developed through education and practical training on applications of tasks. Soft skills, on the other hand, are the nature of interpersonal of individual that are more difficult subject to be defined and measured. Subsequently, Balcar et al., (2011) summarized the tools to develope human capital of graduates with the topology of of skills as indicated in Table 5. This table describes both soft skills and hard skills in terms of generic skills and specific skills. The hard skills are technical and job specific skills while soft skills are non job specifics, intangible and hard to measure. Meanwhile, generic skills apply employees working in most companies who have both hard skills and soft skills. On the other hand, specific skills can also be both hard skills or soft skills which can be applied to employees of a certain companies who specialize in any industries where they are the experts. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences Vol. 9 , No. 11, November, 2019, E-ISSN: 2222-6990 © 2019 HRMARS 868 Table 5: Typology of Soft Skills Ha

Snapshot on the Career and Employability of Islamic Studies Graduates in Malaysia