SOFT SKILLS: AN ANALYSIS OF THEIR EMPLOYABILITY POSSIBILITIES IN THE CONTEXT OF THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The soft skills have been defended by the academy as a set of cross-cutting skills that allow us to achieve significant improvements in innovation, entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship in workers, raising the levels of competitiveness of their companies. The evidence suggests that transversal competences, not specific instrumental ones, are tools that facilitate adaptation to change and overcoming moments of crisis. In the context of the fourth industrial revolution in which digital transformation, big data, process automation and robotization are becoming widespread, technological unemployment threatens a large part of the workers in OECD countries. In this sense, the transversal competences are stimulated from the university with the objective that the future graduates incorporate a box of tools that allow them to improve their adaptability, survival and income level when they reach the labor market, especially at a time like the current one in which most of the jobs will be replaced by the use of algorithms and robots. This study analyzes the nature of the thirteen transversal competences proposed by the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, evaluating by means of an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) its relevance as facilitators of employability of future graduates, configuring itself as the last defensive barrier against technological unemployment.