COMPETENCY GAP: MANAGERS’ EXPECTATIONS AND STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF THE IMPORTANCE OF SOFT SKILLS

It has often been stated that soft skills competencies are crucial for hospitality graduates entering modern business world. It becomes clear that various interests in the market of jobrelated skills have been created between different stakeholders: industry, educators and students. The previous research has already identified a gap between the perceptions of hospitality students when it comes to importance of soft skills opposed to their level of preparedness. The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a gap between hospitality students perceptions of which soft skills are important for their future careers and whether their college curriculum and co-op prepared them to be competent in these skills. The results obtained proved that there is a gap between the importance and the level of preparedness, since the importance of soft skills was rated higher than students’ level of preparedness. There were also significant differences between genders when it comes to importance, while preparedness was evaluated differently when looking upon graduate levels. The results of the paper show that the future of competence building process for hospitality students and employees in hospitality industry should include building of all three categories: knowledge, attitude and skills for students and employees in hospitality