DETERMINING THE HETEROGENEITY OF STAKEHOLDERS PREFERENCES TOWARDS DESIRABLE KEY COMPETENCES OF JOB APPLICANTS: A CONJOINT ANALYSES APPROACH

Year 2015, Volume: 3 , 107 - 117, 01.09.2015

Milena Popovıć Marija Kuzmanovıć Gordana Savıć

Abstract

The competition in the
labor market is severe, especially in times of economic crisis when a lot of
candidates seeking for appropriate job position. The main question for
applicants is how to obtain the position that suits them, or which abilities
and skills they need to possess in order to best respond to the specific needs
and requirements of HR managers. On the other hand, HR managers are looking for
a good staff that will be loyal to the company. In this chain of
"needs", teachers play a crucial role by listening to market demands
and involving them in curricula developments. So the question is: what are the
key competencies of candidates which all stakeholders (HR managers, teachers or
students) consider as important. We propose conjoint analysis as an appropriate
tool to determine the preferences of all stakeholders. Conjoint analysis is a multivariate
technique that can be used to understand how an individual's preferences are
developed. In particular, our approach accounts for different importance HR
managers, teachers and students attach to various aspects of key competencies.
The results show that most of HR managers consider the candidate's work
experience as the most important. That means, the candidates should be highly
specialized in the subject area or they should have the master degree. It is
interesting that the students share the same opinions, while teachers believe
that creativity and possess problem solving skills are more important.
Understanding which competences of candidates are the most important for
employers, allows teachers to make a right focus in designing a curricula, and
also candidates to be focused on the development of specific skills and
abilities.

Keywords

key competences, job applicant, preferences, heterogeneity, conjoint analysis

References

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