Application of Technical and Soft Skills in the First Job Experience by Accountancy Graduates in the Philippines: Implications for Accounting Curriculum Development

Abstract

Currently, the labor workforce in the Philippines needs accountants brought about by the ASEAN integration. As such, there is a greater demand for universities to produce graduates who are ready to face the real world of business. To produce quality graduates, the technical and soft skills of the accountancy graduates must be in harmony. This study aimed to ascertain the technical and soft skills matching in relation to the first job experience of accountancy graduates. A descriptive-correlational design was utilized in this study. Stratified random sampling was utilized to get the 70-study sample. Self-constructed questionnaires were used in this study. Content validity was done by five experts. Percentages, mean, stand and regression were used in the analysis of data. The work profile revealed the following: 37.14% of accountancy graduates are working in the audit sector, 34.29% worked in General Accounting/Finance; 70% of respondents are currently working with 1 -3 years of experience, while 30% working beyond 3 years from the date of graduation; 45.71% of the respondents underwent internship at Alas Oplas & Co. CPAs, and 58.57% of accountancy graduates who took the internship program spent at least 160 hours on their internship. Regression analysis revealed that the technical skills gained in the internship program of the accountancy graduates were significantly related to the technical skills applied during their first job experience. On the other hand, the Accountancy Program's soft skills are significantly related to the soft skills applied during their first job experience.

Evaluating Rwanda Polytechnic Graduates’ Self-assessment on the Application of Soft Skills in the Workplace.

“…One study in the mining engineering found that soft skills training increase the decision latitude and social support of employees (Molek-Winiarska & Kawka, 2022). It was also observed that soft skills affect the engineering graduates' first job experience (Diokno & Peprah, 2021). Among the future-ready workforce top skills projected for 2025, creativity and innovation skills, problem-solving skills, leadership and social influence as well as flexibility and critical thinking skills make the list (Li, 2022).…”

Microlearning as a new method of teaching soft skills to university students

“…The opinion on the importance of acquiring flexible skills is often the same for different groups of people studying this issue: they should be developed on equal terms with professional competencies, since they are equivalent to them in importance for the job (Balcar, 2016;Duhigg, 2016;Davidson et al, 2017;Zuo et al, 2018). Many employers already pay significant attention to the possession of soft skills, highlighting critical thinking, problem solving, self-management, stress tolerance, and emotional intelligence as the most important ones (World Economic Forum [WEF], 2020; Diokno and Peprah, 2021). In addition to looking for these qualities on resumes (Stewart et al, 2016), employers are also looking for the ability to apply these skills in the workplace and when running errands, as it is soft skills that help with team coordination and maintain a productive atmosphere (Fernandez and Liu, 2019).…”