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A fast-changing environment entails several reflections about skills and attitudes required to face the increasing complexity brought by the “glocal, liquid and networked” world in which workers operate (Bauman, 2003; Clarke, 2017). In the literature, an increased attention has been devoted to the impact of interpersonal skills and personal characteristics on employability (Heckman and Kautz, 2012; Succi, 2019; Wheeler, 2016). In this context, the so-called soft skills become of crucial importance, but a lack of academic attention devoted to their development, and a deficit of companies in integrating soft skills in their selection, induction and training processes have been identified (Hurrell, 2016). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

An exploratory study has been designed to describe the tools in use to assess soft skills, during the recruitment process and those to develop soft skills of graduates, during their first years on the job. In January 2017, two symmetrical online questionnaires have been sent to 500 HR managers and 240 graduates of a European business school, in Italy and Germany.

Results show that graduates and managers describe differently the use of tools to develop graduates’ soft skills. The large majority of HR managers indicate they offer formal training to young graduates and that they are involved in the performance appraisal sessions, while only 22 percent of students confirm they receive formal training and only 26 percent declare to be inserted in a performance appraisal process. Moreover, concerning the assessment of soft skills during the selection process, significant differences between Italian and German companies emerged.

This research constitutes the first step to acknowledge the lack of initiatives devoted to soft skills development, despite their rising importance for the job market.

Findings allow initiating a discussion about a strategic topic in human resources management: whose responsibility is it to develop soft skills? Should graduates, higher education or companies fill the gap? The study can be extended to other types of higher education institutions, and a qualitative research could deepen the understanding of root causes of the differences identified.

The impact on youth employment, reduction of labor skills mismatch and improvement of managerial practices could be interesting social implications of the study.

While previous research has predominantly focused on higher education executives and HR managers, this paper’s contribution consists in involving young graduates in the reflection on employability.

Industry 4.0 or the Fourth Industrial Revolution is characterized by robotic process automation and machine-to-machine communications. Since computers, machines, and robots share information and knowledge more swiftly and effectively than humans, the question is what human beings' role could be in the era of the Internet-of-Thing. The answer would be beneficial to institutions for higher education to anticipate. The literature reveals a gap between the intended learning outcomes in higher education institutions and the needs of employers in Industry 4.0. Evidence is shown that higher education mainly focused on knowledge (know-what) and theory-based (know-why) intended learning outcomes. However, competent professionals require knowledge (know-what), understanding of the theory (know-why), professional (know-how) and interpersonal skills (know-how and know-who), and need intrapersonal traits such as creativeness, persistence, a result-driven attitude et cetera. Therefore, intended learning outcomes in higher education should also develop interpersonal skills and intrapersonal characteristics. Yet, personality development is a personal effort vital for contemporary challenges. The history of the preceding industrial revolutions showed the drawbacks of personality and character education; politicians have abused it to control societies in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the discussion section, the institutions for higher education are alerted that the societal challenges of the twenty-first century could lead to a form of personality education that is not in the student's interest and would violate Isaiah Berlin's philosophical concept of ‘positive freedom’.

The purpose of this paper is to address the need to rethink the traditional approach to education in the university engineering curriculum. The paper examines two engineering projects led by university students in Sweden: the design and construction of a solar-powered car taking part in the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge and the creation of a business model for the ownership phase of an electric car together with Polestar.

An extensive literature review was conducted. Students were interviewed and surveyed on their impressions of their learning experience in the two projects and student logbooks reviewed. Problem-based learning (PBL), the Conceiving, Designing, Implementing and Operating approach and the ABCD procedure are used. Results are compared to theories from the literature.

PBL in real-world settings can increase engineering students’ technical knowledge and improve their technical skills as they solve complex problems or propose solutions to such problems. Such projects also strengthen students’ commitment, self-confidence and self-esteem as well as promote co-operation and creativity. These are soft skills largely absent from traditional engineering education.

Innovative, student-led learning in the applied engineering curriculum can foster students’ soft skills in ways that teacher-led, lecture-style learning does not.

This research offers a timely perspective on an issue of current interest in engineering education: student-led learning versus teacher-led learning. The paper also provides two illustrative student-led projects that focus on sustainability and mobility.

Today’s software engineers often work in teams to develop complex software systems. Therefore, successful software engineering in practice require team members to possess not only sound programming skills such as analysis, design, coding and testing but also soft skills such as communication, collaboration and self-management. However, existing examination-based assessments are often inadequate for quantifying students’ soft skill development. The purpose of this paper is to explore alternative ways for assessing software engineering students’ skills through a data-driven approach.

In this paper, the exploratory data analysis approach is adopted. Leveraging the proposed online agile project management tool – Human-centred Agile Software Engineering (HASE), a study was conducted involving 21 Scrum teams consisting of over 100 undergraduate software engineering students in multi-week coursework projects in 2014.

During this study, students performed close to 170,000 software engineering activities logged by HASE. By analysing the collected activity trajectory data set, the authors demonstrate the potential for this new research direction to enable software engineering educators to have a quantifiable way of understanding their students’ skill development, and take a proactive approach in helping them improve their programming and soft skills.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has yet to be published previous studies using software engineering activity data to assess software engineers’ skills.

Rooting in the literature on training and laying on Kirkpatrick model, this paper aims to explore key drivers of corporate training to identify how they can be combined into an integrated framework of learning for human capital development.

By adopting the constructivist grounded theory, this contribution analyzes the experience carried out in the last ten years by Virvelle, an Italian corporate training firm.

Results show the rise of five core categories, g1iving rise to an integrated model of Kirkpatrick. Their dynamic interplay led to a new orientation of Kirkpatrick model giving rise to a metalearning ecosystem.

Managerial implications have identified key factors on which building and implementing appropriate corporate training programmes capable of triggering co-generative processes of value creation. Particularly, the essential role of learning quality culture, digital technology and personalization are detected in integrating not only hard but furthermore soft shades of learning. Concerning theoretical implications, the emergence of key structural and systems enabling dimensions for learning, and contextual mechanisms involved in reshaping training effectiveness and achieving integrated learning outcomes are detected. The main limitation of this study lies in the need to generalize results: the conceptualized framework needs to be empirically tested.

The value of this research is built along three main points. The first is the integration among the core categories that an integrated learning system can be built on, promoting learning quality culture through positive feedback loops. The second is represented by the chance to enhance an integrated mutual knowledge development among engaged actors, thereby shaping a more holistic and multidimensional learning model. The third is related to the transversal role that digital technology plays in all phases of the training process as it integrates and enriches them.

This study investigates the impact of large-scale teaching in higher education on students’ preparedness for the workforce within the context of evolving labour market demands, the expansion of higher education and the application of high-impact teaching strategies. It synthesizes perspectives on employer work readiness, the challenges and opportunities of large-scale teaching and strategies for fostering a dynamic academia-industry feedback loop. This multifaceted approach ensures the relevance of curricula and graduates’ preparedness while addressing the skills gap through practical recommendations for aligning teaching methodologies with employer expectations.

The research methodically examines the multifaceted challenges and opportunities inherent in large-scale teaching. It focuses on sustaining student engagement, maintaining educational quality, personalizing learning experiences and cultivating essential soft skills in extensive student cohorts.

This study highlights the critical role of transversal skills in work readiness. It also uncovers that despite its challenges, large-scale teaching presents unique opportunities. The diversity of large student groups mirrors modern workplace complexities, and technological tools aid in personalizing learning experiences. Approaches like peer networking, innovative teaching methods, real-world simulations and collaborative resource utilization enrich education. The importance of experiential learning for augmenting large-scale teaching in honing soft skills is emphasized.

This manuscript contributes to the discourse on large-scale teaching, aligning it with employer expectations and the dynamic requirements of the job market. It offers a nuanced perspective on the challenges and opportunities this educational approach presents, providing insights for crafting engaging and effective learning experiences in large cohorts. The study uniquely integrates experiential learning, co-creation in education and industry-academia feedback loops, underscoring their importance in enhancing student work readiness in large-scale teaching.

Drawing on Bandura’s social learning theory (SLT), the purpose of this paper is to investigate, analytically, the impact that after-training skills level (i.e. perceived skill match) has on change self-efficacy. Moreover, this research also aims to identify which specific skills sets (if any) act as a protective factor during organizational change, supporting the change confidence (CC) level of the people involved.

Quantitative research was carried out on a sample of 200 workers in the bank sector.

Findings of this study suggest that skill match has a significant impact on the CC level. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that, even in front-office jobs, a perceived skill match of soft skills does not have a significant impact on staff CC, unlike that suggested by common sense and by literature.

Future research should investigate if and how a training process enables change self-efficacy over time or instead shows its utility only when it is relating to a specific and limited period.

This study suggests that in designing training, top and middle management should pay specific attention to change recipients’ needs by adopting a bottom-up approach. Moreover, to improve training effectiveness, it would be advisable to also train change recipients’ supervisors.

This study has social implications in suggesting how to foster the adaptive capabilities of change recipients in current turbulent times. In doing so, it suggests how to prevent some undesirable change consequences such as anxiety, intention to quit, work-related stress and change cynicism.

This paper shows that, from a methodological point of view, it is necessary to evaluate training effectiveness at the level of a specific skill area and not simply by comparing the trained/not trained people, as typically practiced until now.

Analytics technologies are profoundly changing the way in which organizations generate economic and social value from data. Consequently, the professional roles of data scientists and data analysts are in high demand in the labor market. Although the technical competencies expected for these roles are well known, their behavioral competencies have not been thoroughly investigated. Drawing on the competency-based theoretical framework, this study aims to address this gap, providing evidence of the emotional, social and cognitive competencies that data scientists and data analysts most frequently demonstrate when they effectively perform their jobs, and identifying those competencies that distinguish them.

This study is exploratory in nature and adopts the competency-based methodology through the analysis of in-depth behavioral event interviews collected from a sample of 24 Italian data scientists and data analysts.

The findings empirically enrich the extant literature on the intangible dimensions of human capital that are relevant in analytics roles. Specifically, the results show that, in comparison to data analysts, data scientists more frequently use certain competencies related to self-awareness, teamwork, networking, flexibility, system thinking and lateral thinking.

The study was conducted in a small sample and in a specific geographical area, and this may reduce the analytic generalizability of the findings.

The skills shortages that characterize these roles need to be addressed in a way that also considers the intangible dimensions of human capital. Educational institutions can design better curricula for entry-level data scientists and analysts who encompass the development of behavioral competencies. Organizations can effectively orient the recruitment and the training processes toward the most relevant competencies for those analytics roles.

This exploratory study advances our understanding of the competencies required by professionals who mostly contribute to the performance of data science teams. This article proposes a competency framework that can be adopted to assess a broader portfolio of the behaviors of big data professionals.

This chapter compares research management and administration (RMA) associations worldwide and the existing professional development frameworks (PDFs) for RMAs. The comparison is based on a study of 22 national, European Union (EU), and international RMA associations/networks which was carried out between April and June 2020 and revised in 2022; it aims at providing a comprehensive overview of skills and competences of RMAs as a profession to enable worldwide benchmarking and analysis.

The benchmarking analysis could provide useful information for those working on the development of professional frameworks training targeted at RMAs, or the recognition of RMA as a profession.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the gaps between the importance perceived and the competence gained by the hospitality students in terms of the employability skills.

Questionnaires were distributed to 841 hospitality students in five regions in Malaysia. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data.

The findings show that there are significant differences between importance perceived and competence attained in teamwork, leadership, basic, technical skills and ethical skills. Additionally, the finding of this study indicates that the culinary and bakery students perceive that they are not given adequate exposure to possess such skills. It is important to ensure that graduates are equipped with the twenty-first century skills such as problem solving and analytic, decision making, organization and time management, risk taking and communication.

The findings provide insights to curriculum developers and policy makers on the appropriate interventions that need to be taken to improve the employability skills of the graduates.

An original contribution is made by linking employability model to TVET sector.