Soft and Hard Skills Development: A Current Situation in Serbian Companies

Tendency of building a knowledge-based society and existing demands of employers generate a need for highly educated workers with diverse skills and competencies applicable in the workplace. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which employers perceive the difference of hard and soft skills and their importance for success in the twenty-first century workforce. The evidence will serve for the integration of soft skills into the lifelong learning curriculum. The total number of 17 skills has been observed, five of which are hard skills and twelve are soft skills. A significant difference was found between the perceived importance of soft skills in production and trade sector, on one hand, and service sector, on the other hand. The results of the study will be a good starting point for further research of soft skills needed for production, trade and service sector.