Abstract:

Nowadays, success in the labour market requires a huge development of technical (hard) skills, but also of emotional (soft) skills, that multiplies the value of the former ones. Besides, the (technical) knowledge is more frequent than the talent. Moreover, an employee with a university degree has nearly become a commodity. This increases competence in the labour market and requires that the staff responsible of the recruiting processes search for other abilities in the candidates, the soft skills.

These skills comprise, among others, topics on communication, management, selling, networking, leadership, working in groups, and many more. There is a stronger connection between soft skills and success than with hard skills and success. This is linked with the existence of multiple intelligences for each one of us (Garner, 1983) and, in particular, of the social intelligence (Golleman, 2006) .

One of the first course on soft skills was conducted by Dale Carnegie in the 1930's, after hearing the interest on these matters of their students of public speaking courses. Its syllabus can be found in the book How to win friends and influence people? (Carnegie, 1936). Despite the importance of these abilities was acknowledged by human resources managers in the last years, very few (if not any) formal courses have been included in compulsory primary and secondary education across the world. Moreover, one can only find courses on these topics at some MBA programs, and on self-help programs offered by private non-academic institutions.

In this communication we propose a syllabus for a course on soft skills in order to be taught at university, in particular at a School of Computer Science. The tools supplied along the course are intended in order that the students could become linchpins within their organizations and markets (Godin, 2010).

References:
[1] Carnegie, D. (1936). How to win friends and influence people. Ed. Simon and Schuster.
[2] Garner, H. (1983) Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences . Ed. Basic Books.
[3] Godin, S. (2010) Linchpin. Are you indispensable? Penguin Group Inc.
[4] Goleman, D. (2006) The New Science of Human Relationships. Ed. Bantam Books

Keywords:

Soft skills, labour market, job, linchpin.