Soft skills acquisition for engineering undergraduates in Turkey: A soft skills course design

Year 2023, , 144 - 156, 30.06.2023

Sinan Bataklar , Zeki Toy

https://doi.org/10.24289/ijsser.1260896

Cited By: 3

Abstract

In the ever-changing employment world, HR departments in all sectors are highly meticulous while hiring persons for all sorts of positions for organizations. What they expect the applicants to possess is not only the technical skills they need to do their jobs but also the soft skills they will be using in the job environment such as critical decision making, team-leading, communication and more to be productive, efficient, and effective. Since engineering is a highly interdisciplinary field, graduates of it have the opportunity to work in many different professional contexts and they must acquire soft skills for all sorts of professional settings. This study explores soft skills for professional life and determines the content of the soft-skills course that should be included in the curriculum of engineering faculties at Turkish universities which are in the top 10 ranking of University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP) and offers a course design for a soft-skills course originating from academic discussions and the needs of the job market.

Keywords

Engineering graduates, hard skills, soft skills, soft skills course design

References

• Abdullah, A. R., Muhammad, M. Z., & Md Nasir, N. A. (2019). The role of soft skills on Business graduates employability. Journal of Entrepreneurship and Business,7(2), 83-94.
• Andrews, J., & Higson, H. (2008). Graduate employability, ‘soft skills’ versus ‘hard’ business knowledge: A European study. Higher Education in Europe, 33(4), 411-422.
• Ansar, S., Arifin, S., & Ikhfan, H. (2018). Assessing soft skills of undergraduate students: Framework for improving competitiveness, innovation and competence of higher education graduates. Studia Humanitatis, 2018. № 1. http://st-hum.ru/en/node/643
• Belsky, J. (2019). The great client partner: How soft skills are the true currency in client relationships. Mahopac Publishing.
• Bhatnagar, N., & Bhatnagar, M. (Eds.). (2012). Effective communication and soft skills: Strategies for success. Pearson.
• Brent, M., & Dent, F. E. (2015). The leader's guide to coaching and mentoring: how to use soft skills to get hard results. Pearson.
• Butterfield, J. (2010). Problem solving and decision making. Cengage Learning.
• Cernuşca, L. (2020). Soft and hard skills in accounting field-Empiric results and implication for the accountancy profession. Studia Universitatis Vasile Goldis Arad – Economics Series, 30(1), 33-56.
• Cheng, A., & Hitt, C. (2018). Hard work and soft skills: The attitudes, abilities, and character of students in career and technical education. American Enterprise Institute.
• Cook, S. (2009). Leading for success: Unleash your leadership potential to achieve extraordinary results. IT Governance Publishing.
• Dell'Aquila, E., Marocco, D‎., Ponticorvo, M., Ferdinando, A. D., Schembri, M., & Miglino, O. (2017). Educational games for soft-skills training in digital environments: New perspectives. Springer.
• Deloitte. (2017). Soft skills for business success. https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/pages/economics/articles/soft-skills-business-success.html
• DeLong, D., & Elbeck, M. (2018). An exploratory study of the influence of soft and hard skills on entry level marketing position interviews. Marketing Education Review, 28(3),159-169.
• Duffy, F. D., Gordon, G. H., Whelan, G., Cole-Kelly, K., & Frankel, R. (2004). Assessing competence in communication and interpersonal skills: The Kalamazoo II report. Academic Medicine, 79(6), 495–507.
• Fernandez, F., & Liu, H. (2019). Examining relationships between soft skills and occupational outcomes among U.S. adults with—and without—university degrees. Journal of Education and Work, 32(8), 650-664.
• Fleming, K. (2016). The leader's guide to emotional agility: How to use soft skills to get hard results. Pearson.
• Gale, A. J., Duffey, M. A., Park-Gates, S., & Peek, P. F. (2017). Soft skills versus hard skills: Practitioners' perspectives on interior design interns. Journal of Interior Design, 42(4), 45-63.
• Ganimian, A., Barrera-Osorio, F., Biehl, M. L., & Cortelezzi, M. Á. (2020). Hard cash and soft skills:Experimental evidence on combining scholarships and mentoring in Argentina. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 13(2), 380–400.
• Gardenswartz, L., Cherbosque, J., & Rowe, A. (2008). Emotional intelligence for managing results in a diverse world: The hard truth about soft skills in the workplace. Davies-Black Publishing.
• Ghosh, B. N. (2012). Managing soft skills for personality development. Tata McGraw-Hill Education.
• Gruzdev, M. V., Kuznetsova, I. V., Tarkhanova, I. Y., & Kazakova, E. I. (2018). University graduates' soft skills: The employers’ opinion. European Journal of Contemporary Education, 7(4), 690-698.
• Hendarman, A. F., & Cantner, U. (2017). Soft skills, hard skills, and individual innovativeness. Eurasian Business Review, 8(2), 139-169.
• Jones, M., Baldi, C., Phillips, C., & Waikar, A. (2016). The hard truth about soft skills: What recruiters look for in business graduates. College Student Journal, v50 n3,422-428.
• Klaus, P. (2008). The hard truth about soft skills: Workplace lessons smart people wish they'd learned sooner. HarperCollins e-books.
• Kumar, E. S., Sreehari, P., & Savithri, J. (2011). Communication skills and soft skills: An integrated approach. Pearson Education.
• Lamberti, G., Tomas, A.-B., & Laura, T. (2021). University image, hard skills or soft skills: Which matters most for which graduate students? Quality & Quantity.
• LinkedIn. (2019). 2019 Global talent trends.https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-strategy/global-recruiting-trends
• Lyu, W., & Liu, J. (2021). Soft skills, hard skills: What matters most? Evidence from job postings. Applied Energy, 300, 117307.
• Ramesh, G., & Ramesh, M. (2010). The ACE of soft skills: Attitude, communication and etiquette for success. Pearson Education.
• Rani, D. S. (2012). Business communication and soft skills laboratory manual. Pearson Education.
• Ray, J. D., & Overman, A. S. (2014). Hard facts about soft skills. AJN, American Journal of Nursing,114(2), 64-68.
• Rehman, Z. U., Bilal, S., Saghar, R., & Abbasi, M. (2017). Analyzing the role of soft skills and hard skills towards performance: An empirical study of the engineering industry. International Journal of Business and Administrative Studies, 3(4),152-157.
• Riggio, R. E., & Tan, S. J. (Eds.). (2014). Leader interpersonal and influence skills: The soft skills of leadership. Routledge.
• Robinson, J. S. (2009). Assessing the employability skills of University of Kentucky College of Agriculture graduates: A comparison of hard and soft science disciplines. NACTA Journal, December 2009, Vol. 53, No. 4 (December 2009),56-62.
• Sain, S., & Wilde, S. (2014). Customer knowledge management: Leveraging soft skills to improve customer focus. Springer.
• Scheerens, J., Werf, G. v. d., & Boer, H. d. (2020). Soft skills in education: Putting the evidence in perspective. Springer Nature.
• Sethi, R. (2016). Importance of soft skills for professional students. International Journal of Recent Research Aspects, Special Issue: Conscientious and Unimpeachable Technologies, 113-115.
• Sitompul, S. S., Kustono, D., Suhartadi, S., & Setyaningsih, R. M. (2017). The relationship of the learning of tourism marketing, hard skills, soft skills and working quality of the graduates of Tourism Academy in Medan. (2017). International Journal of Social Sciences & Educational Studies, 3(4),124-133.
• Sonmez, J. (2020). Soft skills: The software developer’s life manual. Simple Programmer LLC.
• Succi, C., & Cinque, M. (2015). Hard findings on soft skills: How new needs of the job market demand to re-design learning processes. 3rd Annual International Conference on Tourism and Hospitality Research (THoR 2015), 45-52. http://dl4.globalstf.org/?wpsc-product=hard-findings-on-soft-skills-how-new-needs-of-the-job-market-demand-to-re-design-learning-processes
• Tang, A. (2019). The leader's guide to mindfulness: How to use soft skills to get hard results. Pearson Education.
• Torres, M., Flores, N., & Torres, R. (2020). Fostering soft and hard skills for innovation among informatics engineering students: An emancipatory approach. Journal of Innovation Management,8(1), 20-38.
• Velasco, M. S. (2012). More than just good grades: Candidates’ perceptions about the skills and attributes employers seek in new graduates. Journal of Business Economics and Management, 13(3), 499–517.
• Yan, L., Yinghong, Y., Lui, S. M., Whiteside, M., & Tsey, K. (2019). Teaching “soft skills” to university students in China: The feasibility of an Australian approach. Educational Studies, 45(2),242-258.