Soft skills for sustainable employment of business graduates of Bangladesh

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine whether soft skill requirements found in employer job postings (advertisements) within different roles of business are similar to the soft skills practically needed in the workplace and the perception of faculties at schools of business in Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach A two-phased study was administered. Phase 1 involved reviewing the latest relevant literature and hundreds of job advertisements; and in phase 2, questionnaires were administered to elicit responses from executives and faculty members from different universities in Bangladesh. Judgment sampling and the snowball technique were used to develop the sample of 84 respondents with a response rate of 56 percent. In total, 15 soft skills were used to develop the instrument. Descriptive statistics and a Kruskal–Wallis test were performed to analyze the collected data, where factors that retained α at or below 0.05, a family-wise Bonferroni adjustment (Mann–Whitney U test) was applied. Findings All the mentioned soft skills are found to be desirable by the recruiters and faculties also agreed with them. However, there exist disparities on the perceived importance of four soft skills among faculties and recruiters, and a gap was found between the business curriculum and industry expectations from fresh-out business graduates. Originality/value This study could be a basis for future studies and would help business education institutions guide their students to master the skills, and to develop and prepare them for real life battle in the job market. Moreover, the study indicates the gap between executives’ expectations from the graduates and the institutional teaching provided by higher education institutions (for business majors), which would help practitioners reform their business curriculum to better ensure employability for their business graduates. Moreover, the study opens an avenue for further research in this field for implementing training programs for attaining the most desired soft skills among higher education institutions.

Pre-Service Teacher Preparedness for Fostering Education for Sustainable Development: An Empirical Analysis of Central Dimensions of Teaching Readiness

“…The acquisition of certain self-management skills by the graduates contributes to the sustainability of the employment [48,76]. Although less investigated in studies regarding teacher readiness, the importance of self-management in the teaching profession should not be neglected.…”

“…In addition, it has theoretical and practical implications as follows. Most previous papers have discussed the readiness for teaching from a more general perspective [4,7,12,13,21] or have narrowed down the approach to a small set of teaching components or education levels (e.g., motivation, instructional strategies, and sustainability in primary education) [2,6,22,23,42,46,48]. In this paper, our focus was on a comprehensive approach of pre-service teachers' job readiness from an ESD perspective.…”

The Role of Soft Skills within Business Students towards Graduate Employability

“…Therefore, the study hypothesised that teamwork skills will positively affect the employment among graduates. Nusrat and Sultana (2019) identified the most desired soft skills sought by recruiters for business graduates in employment and potential candidates. The study was done in Bangladesh using a quantitative approach that focuses on university-level business education institutes and recruiters of entry-level business graduates.…”

“…Besides that, higher education institutions also play an important role in developing soft skills (Kyllonen, 2013). According to Nusrat and Sultana (2019), competitiveness in the current marketplace and soft skills are "must-have" skills. A student's soft skill can be defined as his or her abilities, skills, traits, attitudes, behaviour personality, rather than technical knowledge.…”

“…This approach can help students to develop and polish their skills for their career as effective skills training can produce graduates who are educated and skilful. According to Nusrat and Sultana (2019), soft skills are "must-have" skills due to the competitive nature in the current marketplace for job seekers.…”