Soft Skills by Engineering Employers

Débora Barni De Campos,Luis Mauricio Martins Resende,Alexandre Borges Fagundes

doi:10.4236/ce.2020.1110155

Abstract

The aim of this study was to understand and compare the expectation and perception of 40 engineering employers regarding the soft skills in Engineers. The most important soft skills for an Engineering professional, identified through a systematic bibliographic review, were arranged into six groups, as follows: critical thinking, creative thinking, communication, teamwork, ethical perspective and emotional intelligence. The chosen methodology for data analysis was a fuzzy logic, in order to preserve the subjectivity inherent to soft skill. Forty psychologists were also interviewed and the delphi method was used to include their perceptions between soft skills for calibration of the fuzzyTECH software. The results obtained with the fuzzyfication of the data revealed that the perception of employers of soft skills in engineering professionals is not inline to their expectations in the scenario they are inserted.

Highlights

Engineering is usually associated with technical skills, logics and mathematics
The values obtained in the item ‘Critical Thinking’ represent an unmet expectation in relation to the reality that is perceived by contractors in the Engineering area
The items referring to this soft skill (D1 & D4) presented results well below the items related to the perceived reality in the market

Summary

Introduction

Engineering is usually associated with technical skills, logics and mathematics. In the present study, the objective was to investigate the importance and necessity of the soft skills, taking the engineering field employers perception as a starting point.Engineering professionals have a broad range of workplace possibilities, from entrepreneurship to non-governmental entities, including people management, education, academic research, hospitals and public institutions. Engineering is usually associated with technical skills, logics and mathematics. The objective was to investigate the importance and necessity of the soft skills, taking the engineering field employers perception as a starting point. Engineering professionals have a broad range of workplace possibilities, from entrepreneurship to non-governmental entities, including people management, education, academic research, hospitals and public institutions. They can perform their tasks in an individual manner as well as in big interdisciplinary teams (Diálogos Setoriais, 2017).

Objectives

Methods

Results