Current academic needs versus business demands for human resource skills and competencies

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The dynamics of market changes and consumer demands have led to new challenges for businesses, including their offers and their customer service. These challenges are closely related to their ability to react, adjust and adapt to these changes in order to survive or created competitive advantage. A key component of these ongoing efforts is human resources, which must have the appropriate abilities, knowledge, and skills to align with market and consumer changes.OBJECTIVE: The object of this paper is to explore the needs for professional skills of tourism-sector businesses in the region of Elbasan and compare them with the actual academic offer of Faculty of Economy at “Aleksander Xhuvani” University of Elbasan.METHODS:In our study 70 businesses of the hotel-tourism sector and 43 businesses of the production sector were selected based in the Directorate of Taxes in Elbasan and the Elbasan Chamber of Commerce and Industry.RESULTS: In our study a major number of the respondents admit to have difficulties in adoption with the new job where 13.6% list professional ability and 13.6% soft skills such as communication as aspects of work in which mthay had more difficulties to adopt.CONCLUSIONS: There is an evident gap between the nature of the degree offered by higher education institutions and the job positions of the graduates.