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An Exploratory Study on Soft Skills present in Software Positions in Cyprus: a quasi-Replication Study

Published: 24 October 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Background: Soft skills, such as the ability to communicate effectively and efficiently or work in a team, are important for software engineering practitioners. Understanding which soft skills are necessary for software professionals can assist in staff recruitment, training, and curriculum development. Various previous works have explored soft skills in job adverts in different contexts (i.e. based on what employers ask for). Aims: In this work, we rely on a study performed in New Zealand, and conduct a similar analysis in Cyprus to explore soft skills for the software industry in a different country in a different continent. Method: A manual analysis of 689 job adverts has been used to analyze job adverts from 2023 and 2024. Qualitative analysis and descriptive statistics were mainly employed for analysis purposes. Results: We have found 36 soft skills, whereas between 2023 and 2024 there are slight differences in the number of skills present per job advert. We also encountered differences in soft skills presence based on the job position category and the company size. Conclusion: The results confirm the existing findings concerning the most in demand soft skills, showing that the software industry needs are global. Nevertheless, there are differences in the soft skills popularity. The results can be used for improving job adverts concerning listing soft skills and performing curricula updates.

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      ESEM '24: Proceedings of the 18th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement
      October 2024
      633 pages
      ISBN:9798400710476
      DOI:10.1145/3674805
      This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International 4.0 License.

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      Published: 24 October 2024

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      1. job advertisements
      2. soft skills
      3. software engineering

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