Analyzing the engineering soft skills required by Moroccan job market

Abstract

Soft skills refer to a set of personal and interpersonal abilities that complete technical skills and improve engineers’ employability. In a context of increased competition, education programs and outcomes need to be aligned to the workplace requirements. For this reason, engineering schools must maintain an effective communication with the professional world in order to identify and develop the required skills. This study aims at describing Moroccan job market demand for engineering soft skills. For this purpose, we have adopted a sequential exploratory design that integrates qualitative and quantitative research approaches. A qualitative phase was introduced in our previous study. It is used to identify the key soft skills required in international and national engineering education by studying accreditation standards and educational syllabus. In this paper we describe the quantitative phase that aims at determining the importance of the identified soft skills in the Moroccan labor market by analyzing engineering job ads. After conducting the reliability test using Cronbach's alpha, we have analyzed the content of 163 engineering job offers collected from Moroccan job websites. Our results reveal that efficiency, initiative, and autonomy are the most needed personal skills in engineering jobs. We also find that the most needed interpersonal skills are negotiation, English communication, French communication and team working. Project management and team management are the most needed managerial skills. Moroccan engineers must also develop innovation, technology, professional and ethical skills in order to meet job market demand. The results of this study will be beneficial for engineering education institutions to improve their curriculums and educational strategies.