Soft skills acquisition for engineering undergraduates in Turkey: A soft skills course design

Abstract

In the ever-changing employment world, HR departments in all sectors are highly meticulous while hiring persons for all sorts of positions for organizations. What they expect the applicants to possess is not only the technical skills they need to do their jobs but also the soft skills they will be using in the job environment such as critical decision making, team-leading, communication and more to be productive, efficient, and effective. Since engineering is a highly interdisciplinary field, graduates of it have the opportunity to work in many different professional contexts and they must acquire soft skills for all sorts of professional settings. This study explores soft skills for professional life and determines the content of the soft-skills course that should be included in the curriculum of engineering faculties at Turkish universities which are in the top 10 ranking of University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP) and offers a course design for a soft-skills course originating from academic discussions and the needs of the job market.