Identifying and developing desirable soft skills for public service
| Date | 01 October 2021 |
| Published date | 01 October 2021 |
| Author | Brandon Waite,Chad Kinsella |
| DOI | 10.1177/0144739420931552 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Identifying and developing
desirable soft skills for
public service
Chad Kinsella and Brandon Waite
Ball State University, USA
Abstract
One of the key goals of any academic program is to ensure that skills taught in the
classroom apply to post-graduate employment. Failure to do so can impact an academic
department’s recruitment and retention efforts, strain relations with alumni and damage
the institution’s reputation. Using interviews conducted during a faculty externship at a
high-performing municipal government, this paper identifies soft skills employers expect
students to have when entering the public-sector workforce, and offers suggestions for
how to best prepare students for public-sector employment in light of these findings.
Keywords
Soft skills, skill acquisition, qualitative data, public-sector workforce, soft-skills pedagogy
Introduction
Perceptions about the potential return on investment of majoring in certain fields have
real world consequences for academic departments’ undergraduate enrollment, graduate
enrollment and funding. Students are often attracted to majors that are considered
‘applied’ or ‘pre-professional’, such as those in business and nursing, since these pro-
grams of study are perceived to have a greater likelihood of leading to better employment
opportunities. Universities are under more pressure to produce graduates with trans-
ferable skills needed in the labor market and critical for employability (Clarke, 2017;
Crossman and Clarke, 2010). Employers have frequently targeted institutions of higher
education for not adequately preparing students or giving them transferable skills
(Hurrell, 2016). Indeed, previous research suggests that graduates frequently feel less
regret about pre-professional degrees than those who graduated with a humanities or
social science degree (Gruver, 2019). All varieties of degree programs are now expected
Corresponding author:
Chad Kinsella, Ball State University, North Quad Building, Office 271, Muncie, IN Indiana 47306, USA.
Email: cjkinsella@bsu.edu; Telephone: 765-285-8790
Teaching Public Administration
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0144739420931552
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2021, Vol. 39(3) 337 –350
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