Abstract
The aim of this article is to provide a systematic review of the transversal competencies for employability in university graduates from an employer’s perspective, with consideration to the importance of the topic in the cross-national context. The PRISMA statement was used to guide the methodology and the reporting for the systematic review. The data collection produced 52 articles from the Scopus and Web of Science (JCR only) databases in the ten years between 2008 and 2018. The analysis focused on the characteristics of the employers and organizations, the methods and the instruments for evaluating transversal competencies, and the most highly valued competencies, both internationally and by continent. One of the main contributions is the creation of a classification that is made up of 41 transversal competencies that are grouped into five dimensions. The results show that employers attributed more importance to the competencies in the dimensions of Job-related basic (JRB) skills, Socio-relational (SR) skills, and Self-management (SM) skills. We conclude that Higher education institutions need to incorporate “pedagogies for employability”, which will strengthen the link between the academic setting and the socio-occupational reality and will ensure that graduates make a suitable transition to the world of work.
Highlights
In the modern labour market, the strategies of employers for finding new workers are a complex subject
Beyond a view of employability that is restricted merely to access to the labour market, the approach that guides the present study focuses on the importance of people’s capacities to be able to contribute to the different contexts in which they act over the course of their lives, which includes social and civic engagement, and economic and social interactions through their work and careers [7,18]
In recent years, there has been notable emphasis by agencies, businesses, and institutions on the evaluation of soft skills, which promote the employability of university graduates [3,5,14,35]
Summary
In the modern labour market, the strategies of employers for finding new workers are a complex subject. In our knowledge economy, employers place great importance on graduates’ transversal competencies—which are known as “soft skills”—because of the notable benefits for the business performance, the effectiveness in diverse teams, and the drive to innovation [4,5]. Soft skills are one of the main topics in educational policy at the international level [3], which has led to an increase in the number of publications in multidisciplinary journals on the topic. This interest has not been accompanied by consensus in the scientific literature about the identification, definition, or classification of the transversal competencies that graduates need in order to be more employable
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