Soft Skills for high Employability from the market point of view

Soft Skills for Higher Employability: The recipe for high Employability 

What are Soft Skills? 

Soft skills are nontechnical skills, abilities, and traits that workers need to have to get employed or to function in a specific employment environment. The soft skills can be grouped into the following categories:

1. Personal qualities and work ethics
2. Problem-solving and other cognitive skills
3. Oral communication skills
4. Interpersonal and teamwork skills

To learn more about soft skills you are invited to follow the module the International Relations Academy of the Hellenic Mediterranean Office offers - please check: http://petridischania.hmu.gr/hmu-lessons/course/view.php?id=4

Most wanted Soft Skills for high employability 

We often hear employers and business leaders lament the unfortunate gap between what students learn in the University and what they are actually expected to know in order to be job-ready and thus more employable. This is particularly alarming in light of the large — and still growing — number of people graduating from university: above 40% of 25 to 34-year-olds in OECD countries, and nearly 50% of 25 to 34-year-olds in America. A McKinsey report back in 2015 reported that employers cannot fill advertised job occupations because cannot find candidates with the desired skills. 

Having said that, universities could substantially increase the value of the University degree if they spent more time teaching their students' critical soft skills. Recruiters and employers are unlikely to be impressed by candidates unless they can demonstrate a certain degree of people-skills or otherwise known soft skills. This is perhaps one of the biggest differences in how the market and Higher education assess their 'employees'. While employers want candidates with higher levels of Emotional Intelligence, resilience, empathy, and integrity, those rarely attribute that universities nurture or select for in admissions. As the impact of AI and disruptive technology grows, candidates who can perform tasks that machines cannot are becoming more valuable — and that underscores the growing importance of soft skills, which are hard for machines to emulate. Though hard skills show off your experience and understanding of a particular, measurable ability, soft skills often indicate your ability to work with others and grow within a company. Soft skills help you build relationships and solve problems in order to use your hard skills to their full extent. Listing soft skills on your resume, demonstrating them in an interview, and developing them in the workplace can support your career and open you to new opportunities.

The Webinar's presenters come from Academia and Industry and will present from their perspective one soft skill that very important for an employee to have.

This Webinar is related to the outcomes of the Strategic Partnership Project Critical Skills for Electronic Engineers of 2020, along which full modules for the development of soft skills have been generated. More information will be provided by the coordinator of the project Dr. Konstantino Petridi during the webinar

I hope that you will join us.

“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The Leader adjusts the sails” –  John C. Maxwell