The third factor mixes different types of skills, e.g., communication skills, cognitive skills, and computer skills. The high loading skills in the third factor include ― _Written communication_ ‖, ― _Design & conduct experiments, and analyze and interpret data_ ‖, ― _Reading_ ‖, and ― _Communication in English_ ‖. This factor includes skills which may not be directly relevant to communication, such as ― _Design & conduct experiments, and analyze and interpret data_ ‖. However, Table 3 and Table A2-2 show that all communication skills fall in the third factor with relatively higher loadings. Therefore, the third factor is named _Communication Skill_ .

The three names of the factors do not necessarily represent all skills in respective factors, but these three names do represent the majority of skills with high loadings. It should also be noted that naming factors is a mere poetic, theoretical, and inductive leap (Pett, Lackey, Sullivan, 2003). Therefore, it is important to look into the composition of these three factors and understand actual skills explaining each factor.

The three factors obtained from factor analysis are similar to other studies using factor analysis. For instance, as presented in Table 1 from Section 2, Paranto and Kelker (1999) grouped skills into four factors, Specific, Core, Personal Characteristics, and Communication Skills. The factor, _Core Employability Skills,_ corresponds to Core and Personal skills, and _Professional Skills_ to Specific skills, and _Communication Skills_ to Communication Skills. This similarity with empirical findings from other employer surveys increases our confidence of the above categorization of skills.

The three skills group identified by the above factor analysis partly corroborates one of the most used learning classifications, the Bloom‘s taxonomy, (Bloom 1956). Bloom‘s taxonomy suggests the existence of three domains of learning. The term ―learning‖ is synonymous to the term ―skill‖ as used in this paper. The three domains are:

- <u>Cognitive skills involve knowledge and the development of intellectual skills,</u>

- <u>Affective skills include the manner in which we deal with things emotionally, such</u> as feeling, values, appreciation, enthusiasm, motivations, and attitudes, and

- <u>Psychomotor skills encompass physical movements, coordination, and the use of</u> motor-skill areas.

The types of skills that our factor analysis categorizes under the _Core Employability Skills_ mostly belong to the Affective domain in Bloom‘s taxonomy (Integrity, self-discipline, reliability, and team-work). The types of skills categorized under the _Professional Skills_ all belong to the Cognitive domain in Bloom‘s taxonomy (remembering knowledge, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating). The skills categorized under the third factor _Communication Skills_ are a more mixed bag, as discussed above, and do not correspond to a specific domain in the Bloom‘s taxonomy. In Bloom‘s taxonomy communication skills are mostly classified as part of the Affective Domain. This partial match of our identified skills categories with the Bloom‘s taxonomy provides further confidence in the use of the three skills group in the rest of the paper.

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