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The main purpose of this paper is to assess the degree of complementarity between cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills, and to evaluate their joint impact on individual wages.

The author uses a survey representative of the Polish working-age population with well-established measures of cognitive and non-cognitive skills.

Non-cognitive skills are important in the labour market, not only as separate factors that influence wages, but as complements to cognitive skills. Specifically, the analysis showed that the more neurotic an individual is, the lower his or her returns to cognitive skills are. Social skills were not shown to be complementary to cognitive skills in Poland unlike the recent results in the United States.

To the best of author's knowledge, this is the first study to provide evidence that neurotic individuals have lower returns to cognitive skills. It also tests the existence of the complementarity between social and cognitive skills.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the principal qualities that define a good worker for microenterprises of the trade sector according to the contemporary literature of the human capital and associated with the Big Five personality traits. It also determines the effect of those skills over the success of trade microenterprises in the context of a developing country.

A total of 393 owners/managers of microenterprises located in six trade zones of Lima district in Peru were involved in this study. They were randomly selected and asked to answer a survey of perceptions about the microenterprise’s performance and workers’ behavior.

The results demonstrate that workers that possess mainly non-cognitive skills would be considered as good workers for trade microenterprises. These skills are associated with four of the Big Five personality traits: extraversion, agreeableness, openness or autonomy and conscientiousness. Also, the results show that punctuality, honesty and assertiveness, associated with the traits such as extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness, are the principal non-cognitive skills that impact positively over microenterprises’ success.

The performance of workers is only based on owners/managers’ perceptions.

The owners/managers’ role is important to help workers to develop the necessary skills that can contribute to the microenterprise. In that sense, if the direct contact that exists between them is leveraged, owners/managers could implement strategies such as mentoring to promote the personal and professional growth of their workers.

This study provides useful information about how specific non-cognitive skills of workers can contribute to the success of trade microenterprises in developing countries like Peru.

The purpose of this paper is to learn more about demand for competences is crucial for revealing the complex relationship between employee selection, different strands of education and training and labor market regulation.

Content analysis and statistics of job advertisements.

Employer skills requirements even for low- and medium-skilled jobs are highly specific. Formal education requirements are higher than they “should” be. No detectable “basic package” of general cognitive skills for low- and medium-skilled jobs was found. Employer demand focusses on non-cognitive skills and specific cognitive skills. Specificity of skill requirement across different sectors or occupation groups differs vastly between different types of low- and medium-skilled jobs and is linked to the interactive nature of the job, not to the qualifications or the experience required.

The analysis can be considered an initial feasibility test for a larger comparative cross-country project that would aim to understand labor demand in different EU countries.

The analysis could be used as input in designing labor market policy and life-long learning programs to integrate low-skilled and unemployed.

The research provides a tool to match disadvantaged workers to jobs for which they possess greater capabilities or to help them develop crucial skills for a given occupation.

This paper contributes to the HRM literature with a more demand-led approach to labor market policy. The authors reveal what role skills and upskilling can play in alleviating the problem of unemployment. The results can be useful for HR specialists and policy makers.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a measure of soft skills suitable for use in a large survey of Australian adolescents.

A survey was conducted with N = 4,704 Australians aged 15–19 over 2 years. Principal components analysis was performed on 14 self-report items, followed by generalised linear mixed modelling predicting education- and employment-related outcomes.

Self-reported problem solving, creativity, teamwork and verbal communication were alternately associated with later high school performance, hourly wage and employment status. These effects persisted when controlling for demographics and prior academic achievement.

Existing measures have been limited by their length or focus on specific skills or industries. The presented measures are short, domain-general, measure multiple skills simultaneously, and are suitable for a wide range of research contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a discrete choice experiment (DCE) on the competencies of potential information technology (IT)-retrainees. The results give insights in the monetary value and relative returns to both soft and hard skills.

The authors apply a DCE in which the authors propose seven pairs of hypothetical candidates to employers based in the municipality of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. These hypothetical candidates differ on six observable skill attributes and have different starting wages. The authors use the inference from the DCE to calculate the marginal rates of substitution (MRS). The MRS gives an indication of the monetary value of each skill attribute.

Employers prefer a candidate who possesses a degree in an exact field over a similar candidate from another discipline. Programming experience from previous jobs is the most highly valued characteristic for an IT-retrainee. Employers would pay a candidate with basic programming experience a 53 percent higher starting wage. The most high-valued soft skill is listening skills, for which employers are willing to pay a 46 percent higher wage. The results of this paper show that both hard and soft skills are important, but not all soft skills are equally important.

The results on the returns to skills provide guidelines to tailor IT training and retraining programs to the needs of the business environment. A key strength of this paper is that the authors have information on the preference orderings for different skills and kinds of experience.

This paper aims to highlight the importance of soft skills for leadership and offers recommendations for soft skill development training for the next generation of leaders.

An integrated review of current research literature was conducted on management, leadership and soft skills to develop recommendations for integrating the development of soft skills in leadership development training protocol.

A one-size-fits-all approach does not work for soft skills development or measurement. Each soft skill is defined differently and should be assessed based on different behavioral actions. Progress in this area of measurement development will make a great impact on the use of soft skills. The development of assessment tools for the different soft skills across professional disciplines is assumed to enhance other aspects of transformational leadership such as coaching and mentoring.

Current strategies for the assessment and measurement of soft skills present an obstacle for including these skills in current leadership training models.

The paper includes implications for the development of soft skills for the next generation of leaders and offers recommendations for integrating the development of soft skills in leadership training programs.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how soft skills can be measured and assessed. This is important given that specific skills vary across professional disciplines and organizational contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how active labour market policy (ALMP) training programmes and hiring subsidies increase or decrease differences in the unemployment risk between lesser and higher educated people during an economic downturn. A focus is put on potential job competition dynamics and cumulative (dis)advantages of the lesser and higher educated.

The paper uses multi-level data. The fifth wave (2010) of the European Social Survey was used and combined with macro-level data on labour market policies of the OECD. The sample consisted of 18,172 observations in 19 countries.

The results show that higher levels of participation and spending on training policies are related to a smaller difference in the unemployment risks of the educational groups. Higher training policy intensity is associated with a lower unemployment risk for the lesser educated and a higher unemployment risk for the higher educated. This implies that the lesser educated are better able to withstand downward pressure from the higher educated, thereby, reducing downward displacement during an economic downturn. Hiring subsidies do not seem to be associated with the impact of education on unemployment.

The paper adds to the discussion on ALMP training and hiring subsidies that are primarily rooted in the human capital theory and signalling theory. Both theories ignore the social context of labour market behaviour. The job competition theory and cumulative (dis)advantage theory add to these theories by focussing on the relative position of individuals and the characteristics that accompany the social position of the individual.

This study aims to examine the mediating role of entrepreneurial skills developed by undergraduates (ESDU) in the relationship between entrepreneurship education (EE) and the core values of sustainable development (CVSD).

This is a correlational study that used a structured questionnaire for quantitative data collection from 399 purposively selected Nigerian university undergraduates.

The results confirmed the statistically significant and positive mediating role of ESDU on the relationship between EE and the CVSD.

This study has contributed to the mediating role of ESDU in the relationship between EE and the CVSD. This interrelationship can further provide a better understanding or insights into how ESDU can help mediate the relationship between EE and the CVSD.

Does entrepreneurship education (EE) really enhance participants’ self-efficacy and influence their attitudes towards starting new business? How does this attitudinal influence relate to participants’ entrepreneurial intention (EI)? Researchers and entrepreneurs alike have been probing into these questions with a view to capacitate the need of EE. This study aims to understand and operationalize a framework for entrepreneurship development by measuring participants’ intention towards entrepreneurship.

The study proposed a sequential mediation framework to examine the impact of EE on EI mediated by self-efficacy and attitude towards starting new business. Testing the hypotheses on data collected from 380 individuals, the study provided differentiated support for the theoretical propositions.

The findings of the study reflect that EE, self-efficacy and attitude towards starting new business contribute in establishing EI of audience. It was concluded that a sequential mediation exists between EE and EI by channelizing through entrepreneurs’ self-efficacy level that transforms an attitude towards starting a new business venture.

The study has both theoretical and practical implications that will enable academicians, managers and practitioners to facilitate entrepreneurship by enhancing their knowledge database, skillset and developing a positive and constructive attitude among potential entrepreneurs.

The study inculcates a cultural lens and differentiates Pakistani context with other developing countries in Asia.

This article aims to examine whether specific job tasks measured at the individual level or personality traits are associated with wages and whether the relationship between personality traits and wages differs depending on the job tasks that individuals perform.

This study analyzes the association between job tasks and personality traits, and their interaction, with regard to wages using German employee data from 2017/2018.

Results suggest that nonroutine manual, interactive or analytic tasks are associated with significantly higher wages compared to routine manual tasks, and while extraversion and emotional stability are related to higher wages, agreeableness and openness tend to be associated with lower wages also within occupations. Moreover, the association between personality traits and wages varies depending on the job task requirements at the workplace. A high degree of extraversion in particular is associated with higher wages when the employee performs nonroutine manual, interactive or analytic tasks.

To date, especially the interaction between individual job tasks and personality traits on wages has not been extensively studied because data on both job tasks and personality at the employee level are scarce. This study contributes to the understanding of wage differences among employees.