Abstract:

Employability skills are skills that can be transferred and generic, like personal qualities and values, required in any job. The various professional contexts have undergone rapid change, enhanced by the pandemic context experienced in recent months. But what skills do employers want? What are employers' perceptions of the skills a marketing graduate needs to have?
Considering the rapid transformation of the working environment, combined also with new technologies, it’s important and urgent to provide insights about the most desired skills required by employers.

This study aims to analyze, for one hand, the employability skills required in job advertisings, in the specific case of marketing/business positions (job advertisements requiring an academic degree in marketing). On the other hand, it pretends to analyze the perception of final year students of a marketing management degree, on the possible skills that the labour market is looking for.

To achieve the aim of this study, firstly it was applied a review of the literature on employability skills, especially in the case of marketing/business positions. Secondly, it was analyzed the skills mentioned in jobs advertisings posted on LinkedIn (in Portugal), specifically those that required an academic degree with the name “marketing” on it. Finally, to find the final year students’ perceptions it was used a quantitative methodology through the application of a questionnaire.

Our analysis reveals some differences between employers and marketing students in relation to the employability skills needed/required for a marketing job. It also provides a rich source of information about employability skills required for different positions in the marketing field. For future research, it would be important to analyze whether the skills required in job advertisements are really worked on in the different marketing degrees offered in Portugal.

Keywords:

Employability Skills, Marketing jobs advertisements, Labour Market.