Soft skills: um estudo sobre a percepção do tema entre recém-formados em engenharia civil e empresas de construção civil

Abstract

With the significant advance in society and the job market when it comes to technology and innovation, the professional profile is going through a process of restructuring, where an ideal curriculum requires not only technical skills, but also requires knowledge of each individual's behavioral skills. These characteristics are related to the term soft skills, in other words, a set of personal and interpersonal skills. Based on this, the scope of this study is to compare the degree of perception of soft skills among recent graduates in civil engineering, and the understanding of managers in the field, in relation to the topic; identifying similarities and heterogeneities. To achieve this, a quantitative and qualitative approach was used to obtain data, through interviews and questionnaires, which were applied to both groups under study. In addition, 17 behavioral skills were selected, which were evaluated using the proposed methods. After analyzing the results, it was concluded that among the skills mentioned in the research, ethics, problem solving and oral communication stood out for the two groups observed. Furthermore, it is inferred that there is a lack of a preparatory debate on the subject during the graduation period; and that civil engineering, as well as other technological areas, require such skills in their activities, making more studies necessary to expand the relevance of soft skills.