The “Soft Five” in Romania

An employability of individuals became dependent not only on their qualification, but also on their soft skills. Therefore, this paper tries to examine an importance of soft competencies for Romanian labour market and evaluate gap between soft competencies of graduates and unemployed registered at Employment Offices and employers’ requirements. The survey among 277 employers (representing 36,268 employees) was realized in 7 NUTS-3 regions of Romania in March 2011 to ensure relevant information. The results shows the necessity of development of competencies for customer orientation, efficiency, problem solving, effective communication and planning and organizing, which are simultaneously the most important for work performance and the least developed. This output represents an important input for an adaptation of current formal education curricula.