Developing Soft Skills, the Intangible Qualities Empowering Competitiveness and Success in the Labor Market, Case Study, Elbasan, Albania

This paper aims at providing a general view of the world of entrepreneurship in Elbasan helping to understand the direction and skills workers should be trained for. Employees of a business characterized by a satisfactory level of vocational training and competencies, including soft skills help a lot in promoting and encouraging successful business competitiveness in the sector where it operates. However, creating such a competitive team is a real challenge nowadays in the context of many confrontations with problems of the external environment but also as a result of many other factors related to the employees' education, training, individual skills, etc. This research, focused on Elbasan, intends to present an extensive analysis of the data collected through a detailed and well-elaborated questionnaire for a sampling of 39 selected businesses in 5 main sectors. These businesses' data were collected about their employees, their soft skills' mastering, their professional training, internships, and future needs for professions in cases where businesses have anticipated their growth. Finally, the study presents its main findings highlighting the professional competencies currently required by the labor market, current workplaces, and the selected businesses. Furthermore, the paper provides recommendations for businesses, employees also the institutions involved in this process, whose applicability would create further improvements in business services, employability, and improvement of workers’ skills within the framework of soft ones.