Digital Marketing Soft Skills and University Students’ Perceptions of Employability

Ildiko Kovacs

doi:10.52398/gjsd.2021.v1.i1.pp25-36

Abstract

Over the past several decades, the digital transformation of businesses has revolutionized the role of the digital marketing environment within organizations. Consumer behaviour has also fundamentally changed, affecting important requirements for marketing professionals, and therefore, new hard and soft skills are needed to become successful. In digital marketing, basic soft skills are increasingly becoming more valued by employers and are relevant factors affecting employability. Business graduate students need to develop appropriate skills to succeed in their career and to have a right balance of skills. The aim of the study is to explore the gap between the most relevant digital marketing employability skillset and the perceptions of graduate university students based on the analytics of previous managerial quantitative research and the findings of the current research. A quantitative study was conducted to explore the perceived importance of soft skills related to employability and the difference between students work experience. The demand of soft skills courses focusing on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) demand was examined focusing on the most relevant soft skills in digital marketing. Key findings of the research explored categories of the perceived importance of soft skills and differences between working students and their perceived skills and the usage of MOOCs. Implications of the results for further academic research is to explore gaps between students’ perceptions of soft skills according to employability research on managerial requirements.

Highlights

Soft skills have become a field of increasing interest in the past decade in lifelong empowerment and lifelong learning
The research papers focusing on marketing soft skills have been published in journals dedicated to education in the past decade, and they have revolved around employability factors and desired skills in various marketing fields (Walker et al, 2009; Finch et al, 2013; Gregorio, 2019)
Soft skills are more difficult to quantify than hard skills and it is more difficult to predict how these skills will affect the suitability in the workplace

Summary

Introduction

Soft skills have become a field of increasing interest in the past decade in lifelong empowerment and lifelong learning. Skills are critical factors for competitiveness and employability for graduated students and wherever employees are on their carrier paths. Structural changes such as globalization, technological progress, digital processes and automatization require relevant new skills from marketing professionals. The research papers focusing on marketing soft skills have been published in journals dedicated to education in the past decade, and they have revolved around employability factors and desired skills in various marketing fields (Walker et al, 2009; Finch et al, 2013; Gregorio, 2019)

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