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Purpose: Skills development for business students is increasingly becoming more important in business education and the workplace. In this paper, students' research skills are examined. The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the issues and challenges students face in developing research skills and how these can be addressed. Design/methodology/approach: The study combines external marker evaluation and content analysis to evaluate one hundred 2,000-word essays and identify issues and challenges associated with students' development of research skills. Findings: Results show that the essays rate well in collecting and using sources and summarising key topics but miss on integrating sources in writing and inconsistency in citations and referencing. Research limitations/implications: One of the paper's limitations is using a sample from a single course in a business school in Australia. Nonetheless, the sampled essays represent similar writing tasks elsewhere that require students to display research skills. Practical implications: Some implications for business and higher education are offered, including suggestions to address the issues and challenges raised in business education. For example, academics are encouraged to communicate clear expectations for writing tasks, provide support and show exemplars of business writing that incorporates practical research skills. Social implications: Business students who develop effective research skills contribute to society by developing skills in effectively searching and evaluating information. This ensures business graduates in industry workplaces reach considered conclusions before making recommendations that could impact people's lives. Originality/value: The study is original in its approach to investigating the nuances of research skills deficiencies by using external expert examination combined with content analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite significant recent changes to the doctoral training environment, particularly provision of employability skills during candidature, there is a paucity of research investigating best practice in this area. This paper describes a case study in how various pedagogical theories, curriculum co-creation, lifelong learner, adult learning, cognitive load, spiral learning, reflective practice, and community of practice theories, were applied at an Australian university to develop and implement a Graduate Certificate aimed at increasing work readiness by delivering research and employability skills training to PhD candidates. Outlined are the rationale, student interest and theoretical basis underpinning this program, and its integrated suite of work-integrated learning (WIL) activities. Comparison against an emerging framework for high quality WIL demonstrated key alignments between the program and the quality WIL framework. These alignments highlight important considerations for comprehensive training of PhD candidates, together with recommendations for future research into WIL and employability training for PhD candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]