A STUDY ON EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS OF ENGINEERING GRADUATES

The professional insertion of graduates from technical universities is a current issue both in the social and university environment. There are several factors that influence the professional insertion of graduates. Among these, the demands of the employers on the labor market and the competences acquired through university programs are emphasized in this paper. The correlation between the curriculum for all study programs with the requirements of the labor market constitutes the major concern of the educational policies. Labour market nowadays are going through a permanent determined changing proccess, influenced by thechnological advancements, the globalisation phenomenon and also by the needs of society. By analyzing entry level job descriptions in the domain of engineering, a certain need of graduates with a high quality professional training, capable of coming up with technical solutions for speciffic social needs has been noticed. Mobility of jobs, obsolete professions and the emergence of new ones determines not only a permanent update on academic training but also anchoring it in the socio-economic reality by correlating with the labour market demands The paper firstly presented a set of skills, identified based on a documented study regarding the employability skills.Based on this study, a questionnaire was developed that was applied online to students from a technical university in Romania. The questionnaire followed the analysis of the importance that students assign to the employment skills at the end of their studies. The results can be useful for education practitioners and for helping students comprehend the importance of employability skills. (C) 2019 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.org.UK