Abstract:

Current trends in the labour market point out the increasing need for professionals trained to do things independently and adaptive people who can solve problems. This requires training processes oriented towards experimentation and problem solving. In order to implement that, we need to reinvent how we plan activities and studies and pay specific attention to coordination between the different actors of the educational and productive sphere.

This article studies the level of acquisition of basic and transversal skills by students through the assessment made by the companies where students have carried out internships during the final stages of their studies. The research is intended to identify the skills assessed in a very different way by students and companies as well as to delve into the reasons why that happens. This should be useful to better outline the competencies at University and therefore to establish more appropriate criteria and guidelines regarding their presence, transmission, teaching and assessment. The final goal being to improve their acquisition throughout their studies. More specifically, the work aims at analysing in depth the issues related to the acquisition of skills by students and their ability to adapt to the labour market at the beginning of their career in order to highlight the shortcomings and enhance its strengths. To do this, we prepared and distributed two questionnaires, one for the students who do internships in a firm and another one for the firms’ students’ tutors. The questionnaire for the firms’ tutors has included questions on the assessment of the competence level of students. Regarding the questionnaire for the students, they were asked about the skills they were required, and the degree of application of the skills acquired during their studies to the work they have developed at the firm.

To analyse the results we have focused on procedures associated with the analysis of variance, ANOVA. More specifically we have applied the model SERVQUAL, which was proposed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1985). This model considers the presence of differences in terms of expectations and perceptions between the two parties involved in a provision of services. Needless to say that in this study, we have adapted it to the assessment of students’ competences.

Identifying the main gaps in the development and assessment of the students’ skills becomes a key issue, since it is crucial when determining not only the transition to the labour market, but how to get there, the skills level students have at the beginning of their working life and, therefore, their chances of success or failure, the odds of a good performance in the company or their learning ability.

Keywords:

Competences, gap analysis, servqual, labour market.