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Abstract One thousand job advertisements in four occupational categories (marketing, general management, finance, human resource management) appearing in a number of graduate recruitment databases over a two-year period were examined in an attempt to obtain an objective assessment of the transferable personal skills demanded of graduate job applicants. It emerged that advertisements within each category were significantly more likely to ask for certain skills potentially relevant to jobs within that category than for others. Advertisements for managerial and highly paid jobs also tended to request particular sets of skills. The personnel managers or other executives concerned with graduate recruitment in 500 of the companies that had placed the advertisements were sent a questionnaire concerning their reasons for stipulating the personal skills mentioned in their firms' advertisements for graduate employees. Logical motives for including interpersonal skills requirements in job advertisements were cited by the majority of the respondents. Two-thirds of the companies used formal job analysis to determine the personal skills specified in advertisements.
Roger Bennett (Sun,) studied this question.