Soft Skills Identification for Guidance and Job Placement. Presentation of the Project UNIMC (Macerata University) for Soft Skills

The issue of recognition, validation and certification of skills, especially those developed in non-formal and informal fields, is becoming a current topic for all educative institutions, including University. Soft skills is a psycho-sociological term relating to a cluster of personality traits, social abilities, communication, language, personal attitudes that characterize relationships with other people. Soft skills complement hard skills which are the occupational requirements of a job and many other activities. In Italy the legal framework on skills is leaded by the Legislative Decree n. 13/13. According to the Decree, University should assure the effective implementation of lifelong learning through guidance and counselling services. The University of Macerata (UNIMC) has been involved from a long time in the field of soft skills with many activities, formal as well as informal and non-formal. A system to recognize and validate them has been experienced in the last years. The objective of the paper is to describe the designed procedures aimed to the recognition and validation of soft skills such as observation, active listening, communication in small group and problem solving. Each skill was operationalized through the identification of specific indicators to recognize three level of expertise: basic, intermediate, advanced. Moreover several tasks were tested in order to identify a set of activities useful for the aim of a kind of formal recognition.