Soft Competencies in Bulgaria

Bulgaria is witnessing the growing importance of soft competencies for individual success on the labour market. This paper is, therefore, focused on the identification of employers' needs for soft competencies and their comparison with soft competecies of students, who represent significant part of future labour supply. Questionnaire surveys among 86 employers (representing 12,434 employees) and 394 students were conducted in Sofia in the period between September and October 2012 in order to gather relevant information. The findings show that there are five soft competencies and that their development should support employability and productivity of Bulgarian graduates. They are customer orientation, co-operation, efficiency, independence and problemsolving