The Impact of Soft Skills Training on Female Youth Employment
Employers around the world complain that youth lack the soft skills needed for success in the workplace. In response, a number of employment programs have begun to incorporate soft skills training, but to date there has been little evidence as to the effectiveness of such programs. This paper reports on a randomized experiment in Jordan in which female community college graduates were randomly assigned to a soft skills training program. Despite this program being twice as long in length as the average program in the region, and taught by a well-regarded provider, we find soft skills training does not have any significant employment impact in three rounds of follow-up surveys. We elicit expectations of academics and development professionals and reveal that these findings are novel and unexpected.
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article biblioteca |
| Published: |
Springer
2016-05-13
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| Subjects: | SOFT SKILLS, LABOR SKILLS, SKILLS DEVELOPMENT, UNEMPLOYMENT, YOUTH EMPLOYMENT, RANDOMIZED EXPERIMENT, EXPECTATION ELICITATION, TRAINING, GENDER, |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31377 |
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| Summary: | Employers around the world complain that youth lack the soft skills needed for success in the workplace. In response, a number of employment programs have begun to incorporate soft skills training, but to date there has been little evidence as to the effectiveness of such programs. This paper reports on a randomized experiment in Jordan in which female community college graduates were randomly assigned to a soft skills training program. Despite this program being twice as long in length as the average program in the region, and taught by a well-regarded provider, we find soft skills training does not have any significant employment impact in three rounds of follow-up surveys. We elicit expectations of academics and development professionals and reveal that these findings are novel and unexpected. |
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