The internship performance of undergraduate students: Are hard or soft skills more important?

Franco-Ángel, Mónica; Carabalí, Jaime; Velasco, María Isabel

doi:10.1177/09504222221127213

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…According to Franco-Ángel, Carabali and Velasco [17], "higher education should provide students with the skills necessary to successfully face their professional career challenges. Industry demands professionals who are adequately prepared for work, equipped with the knowledge and technical skills and the personal and social skills that enable organisations to generate value" (p. 384).…”

Section: From Higher Education To the Labour Marketmentioning

confidence: 99%

Skill Profiles for Employability: (Mis)Understandings between Higher Education Institutions and Employers

Sebastião,

Tirapicos,

Payan-Carreira

et al. 2023

Education Sciences

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There is a consensus that employers, when recruiting, look for future employees to have a certain required profile. This profile consists of a set of skills that are considered crucial for the correct performance of the tasks that the employees will be performing. It is usually easy to identify which hard skills employers require, but it is not so easy to find out which soft skills employees should have. In addition to this difficulty, there is the possibility that higher education institutions may not be preparing students to align with employers’ envisioned skill sets. As part of the European Project “Think4Jobs” (2020-1-EL01-KA203-078797), an exploratory study was conducted to understand whether higher education institutions develop, and employers demand, individuals with the same profiles and to characterise these profiles. For this purpose, eight directors of different higher education programmes and six employers were interviewed. The information from the interviews was processed using the content analysis technique with the support of the NVivo data analysis software. The findings indicate that both educators and employers acknowledge the significance of soft skills, assigning them higher importance than hard skills, and the necessity of coordination between the two skill sets. Respondents also emphasised the importance of training, with course directors focusing more on initial training, while employers highlighted in-job training. Motivation, creativity, interpersonal relationships, communication, initiative and critical thinking were the skills identified by both groups as essential to an employee’s profile.

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Section: From Higher Education To the Labour Marketmentioning

confidence: 99%

Skill Profiles for Employability: (Mis)Understandings between Higher Education Institutions and Employers

Sebastião,

Tirapicos,

Payan-Carreira

et al. 2023

Education Sciences

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“…Soft skills have come together with hard skills, and combining these two skills will produce good employee quality (Succi & Canovi, 2020). Soft skills are important to ensure the success of most employees because most jobs require the employee to engage with others in some way (Franco-Ángel, Carabali, & Velasco, 2023;Succi & Canovi, 2020). Soft skills are vital in customer-based jobs.…”

Section: Soft Skillstrainingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Training Towards Employee Performance: An Evidence From a Public University in Malaysia

Nor Shamsida Mohd Shahidan Lee,

Suhaidah Hussain,

Razalina Abdul Rashid

et al. 2023

IJIM

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Employees are the true determinant of the success or competency of an organization. An adequately trained workforce is important to ensure the workplace has the right and valuable employees. Employees in the education sector need the training to improve their performance as they face limitations or challenges to be creative in completing a task. Despite the increasing effects on the training of organizational employees by organizations, there is still limited literature on human resource development issues in developing countries. The study is focused on the effect of training towards employee performance in a public university in Malaysia. Consequently, all the necessary data were collected from primary sources using questionnaires from 244 respondents. This study employed a quantitative approach and found that induction, technical, and soft skill training positively influence employee performance in the case company. In addition, the study recommended future research in training and development strategies, assisting the employees in understanding the relevance of training towards employee performance, monitoring the performance to ensure employees are on track to achieve the best performance, growing and maintaining the employee’s performance to ensure the organization and personal goal can be achieved.

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“…Globally, to compete in the workplace of today, students must learn high-level technical skills that are expected for positions in their fields as well as the soft skills that will allow them keep these positions or advance to better ones. Franco-Ángel et al (2022) stress that both hard skills and soft skills are important for undergraduate students, but emphasize how soft skills lead their performance to a greater extent. Learning and utilizing an array of soft skills can assist someone in landing a job, advancing in a position within the company, and having a longer career (Afroze et al, 2019, p. 26).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating Rwanda Polytechnic Graduates’ Self-assessment on the Application of Soft Skills in the Workplace.

Uwayezu,

Nkurikiyimfura

2024

JISSR

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The global appreciation for graduates possessing strong soft skills is evident, especially in the evolving nature of the engineering workplace. However, studies across the world highlighted a disconnect between employers’ expectations and the soft skills of entry-level engineers, impacting their employability. This research evaluated the Rwanda Polytechnic graduates’ self-assessment regarding the application of soft skills in the workplace. A survey on 107 graduates, after piloting soft skills and career development training, utilized a semi-structured questionnaire with a 5-point Likert scale and open-ended questions. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, graphs, and thematic analysis. The results indicated that graduates attested a high application of professional ethics and time management skills (M=4.38, SD=0.66) and communication skills (M=4.29, SD=0.70). On the other hand, professional writing, management, leadership skills, and interpersonal abilities scored a moderate level of application (3.41<M<4.20). Qualitative responses underscored the importance of soft skills in determining the level of graduates’ performance in the workplace. However, it was also emphasized that there is a need to reinforce computer literacy, collaboration skills, and time management skills. The findings of the present study underscored a meaningful connection between soft skills needed in the current and future engineering workplace and soft skills applied by the graduates. It is recommended that training institutions collaborate with industries to identify the precise soft skills needed to plan for effective training. Future researches in the form of experimental and correlational studies are recommended for getting a clear impact of specific soft skills on the graduates’ performance in the workplace.

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The internship performance of undergraduate students: Are hard or soft skills more important?

Cited by 11 publications

References 29 publications

Skill Profiles for Employability: (Mis)Understandings between Higher Education Institutions and Employers

Skill Profiles for Employability: (Mis)Understandings between Higher Education Institutions and Employers

The Effect of Training Towards Employee Performance: An Evidence From a Public University in Malaysia

Evaluating Rwanda Polytechnic Graduates’ Self-assessment on the Application of Soft Skills in the Workplace.

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