This study aims to investigate the effect of soft skills and ethics and value on the employers’ willingness to continue recruiting Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT) graduates, together with the moderating effect of knowledge on the relationship between soft skills and the employers’ willingness to continue recruiting UMT graduates. The study’s respondents comprised of 208 employers in Malaysia who responded through an online survey using Google Forms. The survey data was then analyzed using the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM), indicating that soft skills positively affected the employers’ willingness to continue recruiting UMT graduates. Nevertheless, ethics and value were found to be insignificant factors on the employers’ willingness to continue recruiting UMT graduates. It was also revealed that knowledge had the moderating effect on the relationship between soft skills and the employers’ willingness to continue recruiting UMT graduates. Therefore, universities were recommended to invest in soft skills and knowledge education to ensure that graduates met the employers’ professional recruitment standards in areas of expertise.

Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a vital role for the development of any economy. Mul-tiple studies with respect to various aspects and dimensions of SMEs have been undertaken. Some of the problems faced by SMEs from the side of the employees include performance management issues, employee issues like strikes, go slow tactics, and so on. However, studies that explore the issues as perceived by employers are scarce. The present research is undertak-en to find out the various human resource issues as perceived by employers. Data for the present study was collected from 60 SMEs. The organizations belonged to various sectors. Factor Analysis was performed to identify the factors. The analysis identified two factors as perceived by employers regarding human resource issues in SMEs. The reliability and validity of the factors were also assessed, which was found to be sufficiently high. A few suggestions for further research are also presented.