There is a large gap between hard and soft skills and many employers believe built environment graduates enter the working world unprepared.
A Council for the Built Environment (CBE) survey revealed that employers felt the capability of built environment graduates was “okay”, but that there was a lack of “rounded” skills.
“Graduates are not work ready,” CBE researcher Zola Skosana said this week, pointing out that “what employers wanted” went beyond the graduates’ current skills.
Speaking at the second annual Young Professionals Sustainability Imbizo, in Kempton Park, he explained that, while graduates entered the workforce with a firm theoretical grounding, they lacked certain soft skills required by employers.
Deficiencies were found in “real-world” skills, the ability to “view the bigger picture”, communication proficiency, working on schedule, people skills and a willingness to learn.
“The consensus was that graduates lacked skills and attributes that were required by built environment employers from the onset,” he added.
In some cases, on-the-job supplemental corrective training, internal or external, was necessary, as the soft skills were not being taken seriously or deemed a requisite skill.
However, the responsibility for career planning and development was slowly shifting from employer to individual, and the historical general consensus that students enter the workplace armed with hard skills and would develop soft skills on the job was fading.
CBE examined workplace readiness based on a graduate’s knowledge, business and cognitive competence and ethical and personal behaviour.