The importance of students’ soft skills based on pilot research results from Serbia

Slavić Agneš and Strugar Jelača Maja and Berber Nemanja and Gašić Dimitrije (2023) The importance of students’ soft skills based on pilot research results from Serbia. Business & Diplomacy Review, 1 (2). pp. 96-120. ISSN 3004-0116

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Abstract

The rapid changes in the organizations’ external and internal environment require highly competent, flexible and innovative workforce who have the knowledge and skills to adopt to the new situation. Tertiary education has to develop the professional competences and soft skills of their students in order to enhance their employability at the labor market. Soft skills represent psychological attributes that express how people learn, think, and act. The most well-known are communication, teamwork, flexibility, creativity, leadership etc. Research results show that there is often a gap between the students’ soft skills and the employers’ expectations. The reason for expectation gap may lay in the constant changes in the business context and therefore in the employers’ requirements. The aim of the paper is to present a few research results on the importance of soft skills in the tertiary education, the evolution of expectation gap and a few best practices on development of students’ soft skills word wide. Besides, the paper presents the results of a field research conducted in Serbia, Faculty of Economics in Subotica, University of Novi Sad on the students’ perceptions about their soft skills. The obtained results may be useful for the development of study programs in Serbia and in the region.