Abstract
Emotional and social competencies have been shown to be extremely desirable in young people for their successful entry into the labor market. Their development has been studied primarily as a result of formal training in the educational and work domains, whereas relatively little is known about the role played by extracurricular activities in promoting these types of competencies. Non-working personal experiences are often used as proxies to assess the emotional and social competencies of candidates in recruitment and selection phases. However, this inference is not based on clear scientific evidence. Drawing on experiential learning theory, this study investigated empirically the relationship between a range of extracurricular activities (volunteering, cultural activities, experience abroad, sport) and the competency portfolio of graduates. Data were collected from a sample of 324 graduates through a structured survey and a multi-rater assessment of their emotional and social competencies. The results of the Partial Least Square-Path Modeling in general provide support for the positive association between experiential extracurricular activities and emotional and social competencies, although not all relationships are supported. The present study contributes to advance in the understanding of the determinants of emotional and social competencies by examining their relationship with a broad range of extracurricular activities. Moreover, it discusses implications for higher education and human resource management.
Highlights
The current economic environment, characterized by increasing competition, flexibility, and continuous rapid change, has led companies to look for new employees with personal characteristics that go beyond their mere technical ability
We determined discriminant validity by assessing the Maximum Shared Variance (MSV) and the Average Shared Squared Variance (ASV), both of which were found to be lower than the average variance extracted (AVE) for all constructs (Hair et al, 2010) (Table 4)
This study adds to the literature by investigating the role of extracurricular activities as a relevant dimension of young people’s learning experience
Summary
The current economic environment, characterized by increasing competition, flexibility, and continuous rapid change, has led companies to look for new employees with personal characteristics that go beyond their mere technical ability. People who want to enter the labor market are required to show a set socio-emotional competencies (Garcia-Arracil and Van der Velden, 2008) that enable them to pursue effectiveness (Brown et al, 2003; Emmerling and Cherniss, 2003; Williams, 2008; Beigi and Shirmohammadi, 2011; Emmerling and Boyatzis, 2012; Zhang and Fan, 2013). Previous studies showed that ESCs contribute to personal and professional success (Sigmar et al, 2012; Boyatzis et al, 2017), and employability (Hogan et al, 2013). They are the most in-demand competencies in the labor market (Azevedo et al, 2012; LinkedIn, 2019). In order to reduce this gap and help individuals be more attractive when entering the labor market, understanding individual differences in the development of these competencies has become paramount (Leimbach and Maringka, 2010)
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