ENTREPRENEURIAL SKILLS POSSESSED BY AUTO TECHNOLOGY SELF EMPLOYED GRADUATES

 
The study was designed to determine the skills possessed by auto technology self employed graduates in Nasarawa state. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The population for the study was 110 respondents comprises of 30 auto technology entrepreneurs and auto technology employees. There was no sampling because of manageable size of the population. A structured questionnaire was used as instrument for data collection. The instrument was trial-tested on 15 respondents who were not part of the population used for the study after being subjected to face validation by three 3 experts from the department of vocational teacher education, university of Nigeria, Nsukka. Cronbach Alpha reliability method was used to determine the internal consistency of the instrument and 0.984 reliability coefficient value was obtained. Five research questions and five null hypotheses were formulated for the study. Mean was used to analyze the data for research questions while t-test was used to test the hypotheses of no significant difference at 0.05 level of significance. The study revealed 36 technical skills, 16 managerial skills, 11 financial management skills, 21 marketing skills and 16 communication skills possessed by graduates of auto technology for self-employment in Nasarawa state. There was no significant difference in the mean responses of auto technology entrepreneurs and auto technology employees on the skills possessed by auto technology self employed graduates for entrepreneurial ventures. The study recommended that all the skills identified in this study should be packaged and uses to retain the graduates of auto technology as prospective entrepreneurs in the country. It was also recommended that the entrepreneurial skills identified should be introduced as one of the compulsory subjects in all secondary schools in the country. Through this methods students who transcend into technical institutions to the university level, would have become conversant with the tenets of entrepreneurial demand.
 
The importance of entrepreneurial skills in the economy of developed and developing countries have led and would continue to lead to a reconsideration of their roles in the economy of nations. However, success for entrepreneurial ventures requires competent skills. The extent to which graduates of auto technology possess entrepreneurial skills would finally help them to be successful entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur plays a dominant role in the development of business opportunities. According to Ihekwoaba (2007) an entrepreneur is any person who uses skills to discover hidden business opportunity and exploits it for a profit. Entrepreneur is a change agent, an innovator and a risk taker, who exploits business opportunities within the environment by utilizing the resources effectively to develop new technologies, produce new products and services to maximize profit and contributing significantly to societal development. This desire of an entrepreneur to maximize profit and contribute to economic and social well being of the society shows the entrepreneur’s great ability to organize in business organization. The activity or activities of the entrepreneur is called entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship is a process of bringing together creative and innovative ideas, combining them with management and organization skills in order to combine people, money and resources to meet an identified need and thereby create wealth (Agomuo, 2002).