What General Competencies are Required from the Czech Labour Force? Evidence from Job Advertisements

Abstract:     
Knowledge of employers' requirements on competencies of job applicants is highly important in the process of human capital accumulation. This paper focuses on the general competencies since they can be applied in a wide range of jobs or tasks and increase an individual's employability. Our analysis differs from the previous research in two perspectives. First, we adopt the rarely-used method of identifying the employers' requirements (compared to questionnaire survey or interviews) on the basis of job advertisements published online. Second, our aim is not only the identification of general skills required on the Czech labour market but also the econometric testing of the hypothesis whether examined general skills are really general or significantly differ according to required education and firm characteristics such as NACE and ownership. The results of our probit regressions proved that the requirements on examined soft skills, English and ICT skills significantly differ according to the education required and some categories of NACE and ownership of the firms.

Keywords: general competencies, soft skills, probit model

JEL Classification: J23, J24

working papers series