COMPETE partners are ready to start working on the concrete concept and design of a gamified tool that will contribute to improve soft skills among young graduates.
This work is based on several months of research and a survey among as well as interviews with students and employers on a set of 20 soft skills.
COMPETE partners, under coordination of VIVES University, had agreed on these 20 soft skills after a comparison of three soft skills frameworks: the eLene4Work soft skills framework, the competence model used by UNIR and the MODES’ soft skill framework.


To build the COMPETE framework, project partners started from the four categories outlined in the eLene4work taxonomy, the most extended framework. All soft skills that were mentioned in minimally two of the three frameworks were included. For each remaining soft skill, project partners assessed if it was already represented by another soft skill or if it should be included in the taxonomy as an additional skill.

These are the 20 soft skills COMPETE partners referred to in a second stage in which they conducted a survey among employers and (graduate) students on soft skills gaps:

Social soft skills: team work, communication, negotiation, customer orientation and networking.

Personal soft skills: emotional intelligence, adaptability, tolerance to stress, life balance, leadership and cultural adaptability

Methodological soft skills: creativity, problem-solving, learning skills, project management skills, continuous improvement and result orientation

Digital soft skills: digitial information management, digital communication and digital content creation.

Based on the results of their research, including a survey and sixty-nine interviews with employers from different sectors and (graduate) students, COMPETE partners have decided to focus their gamified tools on the following soft skills: tolerance to stress, problem-solving and communication. The game will also include, even though to a lesser extent, elements related to teamwork, emotional intelligence and creativity-related skills.

You will find more details in the first COMPETE working paper. Download Research on soft skills for employability.