Brainstorming Students’ Needs versus Engineering Demands

Nowadays, engineering graduating students face an enormous demand when facing their first professional challenge. Their scientific competence is not a guarantee of their success. Soft skills are equally acknowledged by their employers. But how do students, teachers, young engineers, academic responsibles and employers envisage the importance of those skills and competences? What do employers value most? Are students expectations in line with what the labor market needs? Teachers and academics responsibles have been doing efforts to minor students’ distress, but is it enough? The differences between the perspective of these actors may allow to better understand this problem. With this objective in mind, a survey was delivered to 241 students and a debate between representatives of each actor part was performed. The results show some mismatch between those different perspectives, namely regarding to communicate effectively, which is not considered as a priority by younger students.