The increased use of technology has not decreased the need for soft skills, which are critical for companies that provide interchangeable products and services. Employers are looking to recruit applicants with technical and soft skills, but research has revealed that new hire soft skills are not meeting employers' expectations. Employers expect…

Employees' insufficient soft skills have the potential to lead to collaboration and organizational inefficiency. Business leaders are concerned with the critical issue of insufficient soft skills among information technology (IT) professionals because these skills are essential for the effective functioning of teams and overall organizational…

Literature and research span a multitude of ways to define critical thinking. It is used frequently and interchangeably within academia and the workforce based on the context and experiences of the individual. Amidst the ambiguity and complexity in a composite definition of critical thinking, over the past years, it continues to rank in the top…

Geoscience employers have increasingly called for student competency in three sets of skills -- technical, field and soft skills. One major soft skill identified by employers is teamwork, which is critical in laboratory and field-based activities. At the same time, educators seek to inculcate in students a stronger focus on the development of…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how hiring managers describe the importance of education and industry related/real-world experience as criteria in hiring recent business graduates for the Consumer Products Goods industry in the United States. The theoretical foundations for the study were the CareerEDGE Model, and…

Essential Employability Qualities, also known as soft skills, are becoming just as important for new college graduates to demonstrate during the hiring process as job-specific skills (Hart Research Associates, 2018; National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2018). A review of the literature reveals that employers (Ahmad, 2019; Chhinzer &…

This non-experimental descriptive quantitative applied dissertation was designed to identify and analyze the soft employability skills desired by mid-Atlantic employers of business school graduates in a post-pandemic environment. The study evaluated alignment of the competencies possessed by business school graduates and the desired skills of…

The inception of the business school began in Paris, France in 1819. From there the concept spread to other locations including the United States. In 1881 the first business school in America came to fruition when the birth of the Wharton School of Finance and Economy occurred. From the beginning business schools were steadfast in what was deemed…

This study examined what employers identified and rated as important and satisfactory skills and competencies during the interviews of community college graduates in North Carolina. A replication of the original study conducted by Baird (2016) in the Northeast region of the United States examined graduates from four-year higher education…

In recent years, there has been a large increase in college programs for crime scene investigations. In order for college graduates to be competitive when applying for these highly sought-after jobs, graduates must be able to demonstrate the skills and knowledge they have acquired during their college coursework in lieu of on-the-job experience.…

Student employability after college graduation is much debated, as new hires are having trouble not only obtaining a job but maintaining one. Research indicates (e.g., Baird & Parayitam, 2019; Bear & Skorton, 2019) that employers across industries want and need access to a workforce comprised of candidates with a shared knowledge of hard…

Employers expect to hire college graduates who are prepared for their careers with strong skillsets prior to entering the workforce. The purpose of this action research study is to explore the perceptions of undergraduate engineering students' career readiness competencies and supervisors' expectations to further enhance the skills necessary to be…

University-based certificate programs for students with intellectual disabilities have grown in number since the passing of the Higher Education Opportunities Act (HEOA) in 2008. The Comprehensive Transition Program (CTP) designation and Transition and Postsecondary Programs for Students with Intellectual Disabilities (TPSID) grant were created…

Despite the technical competence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) graduates of the Department of Computer Science (DCS) at the University of Guyana, stakeholders' perception generally holds that they lack affective and behavioural (soft) skills. These soft skills are expected of them to lead and champion technological change in…

Despite assertions and increased discussions about the effectiveness of undergraduate cybersecurity education, the evidence has been primarily anecdotal. Dialogue about cybersecurity education has tended to focus more on technical skills and less on soft skills. This research effort contended that cybersecurity experts with technical skills also…