ANALYZE THE GAP BETWEEN STUDENTS AND GRADUATES PERCEPTION TOWARDS SOFT COMPETENCIES NEEDED IN THE WORKPLACE. CASE STUDY: STUDENT ORGANIZATION IN

• Main Author: Silaban, Dermawati
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/40944
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Trying to understand what skills will be needed in the future is important. The work skills needed in 2020 can be defined as the skills that all citizens should acquire to ensure their active participation in society and economy, taking into account the major drivers of change. Technology has had a deep effect on the abilities employers want from recent graduates (Mitchell, Skinner & White, 2010). Historically, technical abilities, also known as hard skill, were the only abilities needed for career jobs, but today's workplace shows that technical skills are not enough to keep individuals employed when organizations are right-sizing and cutting positions (James & James, 2004). This also applies to technical jobs such as technicians, because the business needs to produce excellent and efficient team in order to be competitive. But ITB as a technical institution mostly focuses on hard skill on education program established. Although soft competence is important, soft competence is often perceived as deficient in graduates relative to hard skills (Arnold & Davey, 1994; Mullen, 1997). Similarly, soft competence is generally perceived by academics as less important compared to professionals in the workplace (Page, Wilson & Kolb, 1993). This raises very serious questions about our students and graduates perceived to get enough soft competence that most desired by employers in the workplace in their Student Organization and is there any gap perception between students and graduates about soft competence they get from Student Organization. In this research, Researcher collect the data use descriptive analysis method, by using online questionnaire that spread to 77 Student Organization based on interest that divided into 4 categories (Religion, Sports, Arts and Culture, and Media) with number of respondents 206 from graduates and 206 from final students who are active in Student Organization. These competencies were identified from the combination of 8 World Economic Forum recent research on Future Jobs Report and 12 competencies from BUMN. The results find out that: there are 5 soft competencies that perceived not achieved enough in Student Organization by Student and Graduates. From graduates perspective, they are (1) innovation and creativity (2) Enthusiastic, (3) Attention to detail, trustworthiness, (4) Business acumen, and (5) Empowering. From students perspective (1) Driving execution (2) Innovation and creativity (3) Enthusiastic, (4) Business acumen, and (5) Empowering. There is a close similarity between students and graduates’ perceived ranking of competencies. Although there also a little difference between the two groups in their rankings of soft competences. However, the graduates placed greater perceived on most of the competencies, resulting in a statistically significant difference between the graduates and students’ ranking. The findings from this study suggest that cooperative education programs and reskilling programs at Student Organization may help develop members’ awareness of the importance to match the soft competencies achieved from Student Organization with the competencies most needed by graduated in today’s workplace.