The ‘Soft’ Gap: Educational Policy Making vs. Labour Market Requirements

Abstract

Integrating oneself into the labor market is often depicted as one of the youth challenges worldwide during the post-university period. The long-existing myth of hard skills' requirements is substantially increasing employers, leaders, and employees' awareness of the importance of soft skills as complementary and essential features of a worker's competitive strength in the labor market. In today's globalized society, mastering soft skills produces predictability in terms of employment. It has already become an inseparable part of a person's resume, inspiring youth to better assess soft skills' value and importance, if they are to become actively engaged workers guaranteeing their families' welfare and prosperity. Soft skills acquisition has brought a restructured school curricula too, meeting the requirements of our society, aiming at fitting the required professionalism and success. Albania, as part of the Western Balkan Countries, is going through vast rapid changes in every aspect of its society, two of which are also the labor market and the labor forces, struggling to overpass the gap between the two. This paper aims to identify and highlight some of the basic soft skills mostly required by the labor market nowadays. Through a comparative analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data gathered through questionnaires and interviews, the research points out some of the essential soft skills employees need to possess to compete in the labor market successfully. Implementing a transforming educational policy highlighting and mastering soft skills would mark the key to an inspiring workplace environment, guaranteeing success in the future.

Received: 13 April 2023 / Accepted: 10 June 2023 / Published: 5 July 2023