Beyond the Business Communication Course:

A Historical Perspective of the Where, Why,

and How of Soft Skills Development and Job
Readiness for Business Graduates
Catherine MacDermott* and Lorelei Ortiz**

The paper outlines the recent history of business graduates’ job readiness
from the perspective of relevant research in the areas of workplace soft
skills, training, employer perceptions, and the role of colleges and
universities (beyond the business communication course) in preparing
business students to enter the workforce. Also discussed are demographic
trends affecting the US job market as baby boomers steadily head towards
retirement and employers look to millennials to fill employment gaps. In
order to provide the perspective of recent business graduates, the paper
includes the findings of a survey study of 108 new hires in the US regarding
their perception of the most important soft skills necessary for job
effectiveness and those skills most utilized in their jobs. Oral and written
communication, in addition to other related soft skills, are identified by
new hires as essential to job effectiveness. From this paper, readers can
fortify their historical understanding of ‘job readiness’ from both the
employer and graduate standpoint, identify current soft skills trending
as desired employability skills for business graduates, and ascertain
where and how students can gain the necessary soft skills to be successful
upon entry into the workplace.

Introduction
We have heard the discussions for decades. Scholarly research articles, noted business
publications, and well-respected business executives have been talking about the
ongoing challenge of finding employees—and in particular, new graduates—who
possess job readiness skills. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, former US Secretary
of Labor, Robert Reich, fueled the emphasis on the importance of a skilled workforce.
A look back at the literature during those years shows that we were quickly moving
to a global world where money, goods, and services knew no borders and employee

* Professor, Business Communication, St. Edward’s University, Austin, Texas, US. E-mail: cathm@stedwards.edu
** Professor, Business Communication, Chair, Department of Management, St. Edward’s University, Austin,
Texas, US; and is the corresponding author. E-mail: loreleio@stedwards.edu

© 2017 IUP.
Beyond All RightsCommunication
the Business Reserved. Course: A Historical Perspective of the Where, 7
Why, and How of Soft Skills Development and Job Readiness for Business Graduates
skill sets needed to adapt to the demands of a global workforce (Reich, 1987 and 1992).
The emphasis on a well-trained labor force proved to be the key to the success of an
information-driven, global and competitive economy (Reich, 1987).
Where employee creativity was once discouraged, it is now needed for
competitiveness in today’s workplace. The recent increase in service jobs requires a new
set of employability skills, also known as readiness skills, that encompass problem-
solving, decision making, communication, flexibility, self-confidence, social skills, team
skills, professionalism, and self-management (Carnevale, 1991; Peddle, 2000; Robinson,
2000; Doria et al., 2003; Apparaju, 2016; Lim et al., 2016; Sake, 2016; Tewari and
Sharma, 2016). Two significant questions reiterated in books and articles since the 1990s
have dealt with: (1) How employers find good workers with desirable employability
skills; and (2) What training is necessary for those lacking the required skills (Hofstrand,
1996; Taylor, 1998; Tanyel et al., 1999; and Robinson, 2000). A larger question raised
today impacts colleges and universities around the world: what role do colleges and
universities play in providing graduates the requisite soft skills demanded in today’s
workforce? In the US, this question has never been more relevant given the growing
and well-documented disconnect between perceptions of job readiness—where students
claim readiness while employers disagree (Jaschik, 2015)—and the 72% increase in the
number of international students in American universities since 2000 (Haynie, 2014).
The paper provides an examination of decades of employers’ pleas for skilled
workers, a look at the training historically provided to newly minted employees by
organizations as well as the decline of training offered, and the demographic trends
impacting hiring. The paper also provides the new employee perspective through the
findings of a 2014 survey of 108 recent US graduates about their workplace preparedness
and which soft skills are most important in the early months and years of their careers.
The goal of the literature and the survey findings that follow is to bridge gaps in our
understanding of job readiness for business graduates and to reveal opportunities for
colleges and universities to more intentionally incorporate soft skills development in
the business communication curriculum and beyond.

Literature Review
Workplace Skills Demand
As early as 1960, Kerr et al. argued that technology determines skill requirements. This
belief continues today as post-secondary institutions try to find a balance between the
workplace demands of knowledge and the skill sets essential to meeting current
technological demands (Renuga and Ezhilan, 2014). Between 1960 and 1985, the
changing work-related and business structure of the economy demanded less in motor
skills and more in critical thinking and interpersonal skills among its employees as
technology began to dictate skills most needed in the workplace (Lerman and Schmidt,
1999; and Jackson, 2007). Cappelli (1993) found that manufacturing occupations
considerably upgraded skill requirements between 1978 and 1986. The most valued job-

8 The IUP Journal of Soft Skills, Vol. XI, No. 2, 2017

entry skills in the late 1980s were communication skills, specifically, oral communication,
listening, and written communication (Morreale et al., 2004). By the early 1990s, we began
to see more demand for strong oral and written communication skills and interpersonal
skills as the workplace arena shifted to team-driven, cross-functional teams that required
interactions with a diverse customer base (Davison and Davison, 1993; and Raymond
et al., 1993). At the end of that decade, the ability to communicate ranked first among
the personal qualities of college graduates sought by employers (Wah, 1998).
As we entered the 21st century, employers began lamenting the fact that new hires,
in addition to lacking well-developed communication skills, also lacked problem-solving
skills, motivation, persuasion, and critical thinking skills—skills that today define soft
skills (Peddle, 2000; Doria et al., 2003; Minton-Eversole, 2012; and Apparaju, 2016).
Soft skills are often described as an art (Conger, 1998; Belzer, 2004; and Ravindranath,
2016) that requires high levels of emotional/social intelligence, language ability, and
training in the art of persuasion (Cialdini, 2012). Soft skills are now considered essential
in “the process of managing and working with people, guaranteeing customer satisfaction
with the purpose of retaining them, [and] forming a favorable atmosphere. . . to deliver
high quality products within budget, on time, consequently going beyond the
expectations of the stakeholders” (Ravindranath, 2016, p. 16). A 2010 survey conducted
by the American Management Association (AMA) attempted to unravel the root cause
of deficient soft skills in new hires. Survey results found that 91% of respondents
indicate the change of pace in business today is the leading cause, followed by global
competitiveness, the nature of how work is accomplished, and the way organizations
are structured. According to the AMA survey, 80% of executives believe that blending
the three R’s (reading, writing, and arithmetic) and the four C’s (critical thinking/
problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity/innovation) would
ensure students are better prepared to meet the demands of today’s workforce. This
statement exemplifies the current trend of thought that, increasingly, it is the
university’s role to prepare students for the workforce. And while subsequent studies
from the 1980s to the present have consistently revealed employer concerns about
communication and soft skills deficits among new members of the workforce, the
question of responsibility has never been fully addressed. It is clear that the business
communication course in the business core seems to play a considerable role in
supporting student development of soft skills. However, other opportunities may exist,
both curricular and co-curricular, to support soft skills development beyond the
business communication course—and universities have an obligation to explore how
best to fill this long-standing deficit.

Training
To better understand how university and curricular roles might be reshaped, it is
important to examine the training historically provided to employees by organizations
and the decline of such training opportunities in the past few decades. There is limited
data documenting corporate training practices over time. However, a handful of

Beyond the Business Communication Course: A Historical Perspective of the Where, 9

Why, and How of Soft Skills Development and Job Readiness for Business Graduates
researchers have shed light on organizations’ historical role in taking responsibility for
correcting employee deficiencies as the economy shifted the needs of employers (Peddle, 2000;
Carnevale and Fry, 2001; AMA, 2010; Davidson, 2012; Cappelli, 2014; and Wells, 2015).
In the 1970s, American workers received an average of 2.5 weeks of training a year
(Cappelli, 2014). By the next decade, during the 1980 recession, companies became more
cost-conscious and cut back on training (Davidson, 2012). Between 1983 and 1991, the
US Bureau of Labor cited that workers receiving formal training increased from 11%
to 16%. However, according to the 1994 US Department of Labor census, less than half
of the small to mid-sized companies offered skills training (Carnevale and Fry, 2001).
Cappelli’s (2014) research on training trends in the late 20th century revealed that by
the mid-1990s, the average amount of training workers received per year was under
11 hours, and the most common training topic was workforce safety—not the
development and enhancement of new skills. Corporate training dollars shrunk
considerably during the 2007-2009 recession and few companies have returned to days
of extensive new hire training (Davidson, 2012). In contrast to company-dedicated
employee training, only 21% of employee respondents in a 2011 Accenture survey
indicated that in a five-year period, from 2006-2011, they had received skills training,
compared to the 2.5 weeks of training per year offered to employees in the 1970s.
As companies weathered Y2K, employers began to feel the exponential change in
the global and technological economy during the first decade of the 21st century. They
also faced shifting company budgets that provided little to no training funds for
employees who needed soft skills to work in a business world with people from
varying backgrounds, cultures, and ages. Employers feared that the gap between
required skills and applied skills would only become greater as we moved further
into the 21 st century (Peddle, 2000; David and David, 2011, and Minton-Eversole,
2012).

The Role of Colleges and Universities

In 1999, John Reed, Chairman of Citicorp and the Academy of Management’s
Distinguished Executive of the year, asked of business schools, “Do you give students
a set of skills that is going to serve them well over their careers?” An interesting debate
ensued: How well are colleges and universities preparing graduates for the workplace?
To answer this question, and to provide feedback to colleges and universities who
prepare graduates for today's workforce, The National Association of Colleges and
Employers (NACE) as well as the Association of American Colleges and Universities
(AACU) conducts annual employer surveys about new graduate career preparation.
Along with determining employer needs, other research has looked at the gap between
what the workplace demands of new hires and how well colleges and universities are
helping students translate their academic accomplishments into workplace success
(Peddle, 2000; Thomas, 2007; David and David, 2011; Dragoo and Barrows, 2016; and
Tewari and Sharma, 2016).

10 The IUP Journal of Soft Skills, Vol. XI, No. 2, 2017

 Oblinger and Verville (1998) answered John Reed’s 1999 question by stating, “The
work world has changed enormously and higher education has not.” Instead,
universities and colleges were seen as places that train students to proclaim their ideas,
rather than expose students to the values of being exceptional communicators.
Furthermore, employers were critical of schools producing graduates who were able to
apply business-school formulas but who were not skilled in being collaborative thinkers
trained in problem-solving and communication, competencies needed to be not only
academically ready but job ready (Carnevale and Fry, 2001; Robinson et al., 2007;
Sharma, 2009; Minton-Eversole, 2012; and Tewari and Sharma, 2016).
The 1998 criticism of higher education was reinforced in a 2011 content analysis
study of job descriptions, student resumes, course syllabi, and business textbooks
which revealed a gap between business school curriculum and skills required of new
hires (David and David, 2011). Similar to other studies, the job description analysis
study advocates for stronger communication skills and soft skills in recent graduates
(AAC&U, 2013; Kleckner and Marshall, 2014; Renuga and Ezhilan, 2014; Zimmer, 2014;
and Messum et al., 2015).
While industry and technology move at a rapid pace, the current post-secondary
education system seems slow to review and revise curriculum and move beyond the
transfer of knowledge to focus more on developing the skills required to succeed. The
point is conceded that employers want institutions to deliver graduates who have the
skills necessary for workplace success; however, the perceptions of business and
academic leaders in graduate job readiness presents a noticeable gap. A 2011 Gallup
survey found that 96% of college and university academic officers felt extremely or
somewhat confident in their institution’s ability to prepare graduates for success in
today’s workplace. Yet in a Gallup-Lumina poll of 623 US business leaders, only 11%
of the respondents strongly agreed that today’s college graduates possess the skills
businesses require (Weathers, 2014).
Further, adding to the employer-university perception gap is the additional chasm
that exists between the preparedness and confidence level of new graduates and the
views of those who hire them. Asking college students how well prepared they are
for their future careers postgraduation and asking employers how able graduates are
to meet workplace demands yields two very different responses. Students nearing
graduation consistently rank themselves as prepared in key areas such as oral
communication, written communication, critical and creative thinking, and teamwork,
all the things many colleges and universities speak to in their mission statements
(AACU, 2013) and the critical skills sought after by employers (GMAC, 2014). In a 2015
Hart Research survey of 613 college students, 74% of respondents indicated that their
university programs are doing an effective job preparing them to have the skills needed
for workplace success. In contrast, of the 400 employers surveyed in the same study,
fewer than 3 in 10 thought graduates are prepared, especially in critical thinking skills,
and written and oral communication skills. Too often, graduates do not realize the

Beyond the Business Communication Course: A Historical Perspective of the Where, 11

Why, and How of Soft Skills Development and Job Readiness for Business Graduates
importance of acquiring these critical soft skills until they enter the workforce, a
workforce that provides minimal to no training.

Demographic Trends
The millennials, those born between 1982 and 2004 (Strauss and Howe, 1997) were
supposed to be the generation practically guaranteed a job upon graduation. After all,
there was an expectation that a mass career exodus of baby boomers (those born between
1946 and 1964) would open thousands of jobs for the newly graduated millennials.
However, the downturn in the economy, coupled with the changing retirement plan
participation system rather than the pension system previously known to US workers,
delayed retirement for a large generation and kept the job market exceedingly tight for
new college graduates. This, however, appears to be changing in the next five years
as boomers reach age 65. Data from the Pew Research Center indicated that 10,000 baby
boomers will reach age 65 every day during the next two decades, and the oldest of
the 77 million boomers began turning 65 in 2011 (Minton-Eversole, 2012).
If it is true that 65% of workers retire by age 65 (Sightings, 2014), companies will
be left with a significant workforce deficit in addition to a void in soft skill savvy
employees. A 2012 SHRM-AARP survey found 51% of HR managers indicated that a
skills gap between workers 31 and younger and those in the 50-plus age range would
impact the workforce as more and more boomers retired. The survey pointed to a
predicted deficit in writing, speaking, professionalism, and work ethic. Given the
demographic statistics, millennials will make up 75% of the workforce within the next
10 years (Sightings, 2014). This will require our now underemployed college graduates,
who are in low-wage jobs that offer little on-the-job skill development, to step into
leadership roles that require strong soft skills (Merrick, 2016). Are they ready? How
can universities and business programs improve graduates’ preparation and increase
their probability of success? To answer this question we must first understand what
new hires know upon graduation and how they rate their own job readiness skills upon
entering the workforce.

The Survey Study

The subsequent exploratory survey study is an attempt to better understand what new
hires discover about their workplace preparedness and to ascertain specifically which
soft skills are most important in the early months and years of their careers. Perhaps
more importantly, the results of this study provide the information needed to start the
discussions of ways business programs can be more intentional in focusing on the long-
term soft skills students need throughout their careers, those very skills we have seen
at the top of employer lists of preferences for decades.

Methodology
The authors used a 7-question Qualtrics survey to investigate the frequency and
importance of daily oral and written communication skills and other soft skills most

12 The IUP Journal of Soft Skills, Vol. XI, No. 2, 2017

used by new hires as they interacted with various audiences including customers,
supervisors, co-workers, vendors, and potential clients. In addition to collecting
demographic information about major area of undergraduate study and number of years
in the workplace, the authors also collected data to determine the size of the employees’
organization and the industry and job title represented by the employee.
The guiding research questions of the study include: (a) Which oral and written
communication skills, and other soft skills do you use on a daily basis?; and (b) How
important are those skills to the success of your job? The survey used a mixed-methods
approach, including a Likert-type scale, with seven quantitative questions, asking
participants to rate and rank responses, and one qualitative question requesting
descriptive text.
One of the primary goals of the survey was to better understand what soft skills
are most important to a new hire’s success and ultimately how prepared graduates feel
as a result of their academic study. Therefore, the survey asked questions such as (a)
“Which of the following oral/written/soft skills are most important for new hires?” and
(b) “Which of the following oral/written/soft skills do you use on a daily basis and how
important are they to the success of your job?” To both questions, respondents rank
ordered the skills followed by a scale of 0 to 5, with 0 being not used and 5 being very
important. In addition, respondents were asked, “in the first years of employment,
approximately what percentage of the day do you spend communicating with the following
audiences?” (formatted as a multiple-choice question with a sliding scale for employees
to indicate percentage of time spent communicating with a particular audience). The open-
ended question, “what soft skills do you wish you had developed in college to better
prepare you for the work you now do?” was formatted as a fill-in-the-blank question.
The researchers used Qualtrics data analytics and performed keyword searches to look
for themes and patterns based on repeated word frequency.
Before launching the August 2014 survey, the authors field-tested the survey with five
different graduates ranging from newly graduated and recently employed to those who
had been in the workforce for three years, following their undergraduate graduation. Field-
test feedback on clarity of instructions and questions as well as ease of survey navigation
was taken into consideration before distributing the final survey to 320 business school
graduates (BBAs) from a small, private, liberal arts university in the US.

Results and Discussion

Of the 320 business graduates surveyed, 108 valid survey responses were received from
graduates. The majority of respondents (84%) graduated between 2010 and 2013. Sixteen
percent graduated in 2014. Respondents’ majors spanned across various business
disciplines, as represented in Table 1.
Despite the various majors reflected, 27% indicated their primary work is
management-related. Fifteen percent identified as analysts, 11% identified as
accountants and 10% indicated their jobs focused on sales. The remaining respondents

Beyond the Business Communication Course: A Historical Perspective of the Where, 13

Why, and How of Soft Skills Development and Job Readiness for Business Graduates
 Table 1: Undergraduate Majors of Survey Respondents
Finance 24%
Marketing 17%
International Business 17%
Management 14%
Accounting 10%
Business Administration 8%
Digital Media Management 4%
Entrepreneurship 3%
Economics 3%

associated their work with banking, consulting, event planning, healthcare, law,
engineering, marketing, and real estate.
When rank ordering the percentage of time communicating with various stakeholders,
the respondents indicated they communicate most with their colleagues, followed by
clients/customers, then potential customers, employees they supervise, and finally, with
supervisors.
Given this rank ordering of audience, it was interesting to learn which oral
communication skills respondents found the most important in order to be effective
on the job, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Respondents Oral Communication Skills Rankings

Oral Communication Skills

(in order of importance)

1 2 3
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Recent hires listed proper grammar, engaging in conversation, taking initiative, and
team communication as the four oral skills they consider most important for job

14 The IUP Journal of Soft Skills, Vol. XI, No. 2, 2017

effectiveness, aligning with findings of relevant research (Robles, 2012; and Ortiz et al.,
2016). However, as illustrated in Figure 2, when asked which oral skills they use most
on the job, these same respondents listed the same three top skills but noted that
persuasive communication and conflict resolution are used more frequently than
expected, supporting Conger (1998) and Apparaju (2016) on the importance of
persuasive skills for business graduates.

Figure 2: Oral Communication Skills Most Used by New Hires

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Equally important to oral communication skills, survey respondents indicated which

written communication skills they found the most important in order to be effective in their
jobs. As evidenced in Figure 3, respondents listed writing e-mails, spelling correctly, use
of proper grammar and punctuation as the top three written skills necessary for job
effectiveness, similar to findings of studies such as Lim et al. (2016).
When asked which written communication skills they use most on the job,
respondents listed proper grammar/spelling, writing e-mails, and crisis communication
as the skills most used, shown in Figure 4.
While much of the literature includes oral and written communication skills as part
of a larger needed skill set referred to as ‘soft skills’ (Aiken et al., 1994; Scheetz, 1995;
Doria et al., 2003; Minton-Eversole, 2012; Kleckner and Marshall, 2014; Mishra, 2014;
Weaver and Kulesza, 2014; Messum et al., 2015; and GMAC 2014-2016) the survey also
identified a subset of soft skills respondents feel are used most such as listening, time
management, and positive attitude, as illustrated in Figure 5.
Respondents listed similar soft skills such as professionalism, listening,
understanding personalities/audience, and confidence as skills they consider most
important to their job effectiveness, shown in Figure 6.

Beyond the Business Communication Course: A Historical Perspective of the Where, 15

Why, and How of Soft Skills Development and Job Readiness for Business Graduates
16
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Figure 3: Respondents Written Communication Skills Rankings

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Figure 4: Written Communication Skills Most Used by New Hires
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12

The IUP Journal of Soft Skills, Vol. XI, No. 2, 2017

 Figure 5: Soft Skills Used Most Often by New Hires

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Figure 6: Soft Skills Most Important for Job Effectiveness According to New Hires

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Discussion
Despite recent studies showing that students overestimate their soft skills abilities
compared to employers’ perceptions of these skills in new hires (Zimmer, 2014; Hart
Beyond the Business Communication Course: A Historical Perspective of the Where, 17
Why, and How of Soft Skills Development and Job Readiness for Business Graduates
Research Association, 2015; and Valenter, 2015), the results of this study show that
employers and new hires are mostly in agreement about the communication and soft
skills required to be successful in today’s workplace.
The survey findings underscore the specific skills that new hires consider most
important for success on the job, correlating with the skill sets employers have also
indicated lead to company success. Minton-Eversole (2012) found that executives cited
writing, grammar and spelling as critical skills for the new generation of workers,
echoed by other researchers such as Robles (2012) and Lim et al.’s (2016) findings
of the importance of English skills for entry-level auditors. Moreover, survey
respondents—similar to employers cited in previous studies—indicate that among the
top skills required by the demands of the ever-changing business environment, new
graduates must be attentive listeners and have awareness of audience, able to take
initiative, work and communicate well in teams with diverse personalities, write
persuasively, possess critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and be able to
manage time effectively (Cyphert, 2002; Robinson et al., 2007; Kleckner and Marshall,
2014; Messum et al., 2015; Apparaju, 2016; GMAC, 2016; and Tewari and Sharma,
2016).
In their open-ended feedback, survey respondents expressed additional
appreciation for the soft skills required to be successful. Comments from these new
hires about the skills that would help them succeed include: “Learning to engage in
conversation, understanding team dynamics, personalities, and personal work style
would help me succeed on the job” and “I find that e-mail accounts for about 70%
of my daily communication. If I am not clear and succinct in my e-mail, I have failed.”
Thus, the results of this study reveal that in order to equip a graduate with the ability
to compete and succeed in today’s business environment—through skills such as
communication, interpersonal, collaboration, time management—all of these skills are
critical for both employee and company effectiveness. This is increasingly important
as emerging research indicates that employers view new hires not merely as cogs in
a wheel but as essential to organizational performance and operational success (Ortiz
et al., 2016).
Overall, the results of this study indicate that the employer-employee-readiness
perception gap narrows significantly once new hires are in the workplace, suggesting
that training and education while in college are key to students’ employment readiness.
One respondent in the survey supports the notion that: “Business principles can be
learned and tested in the classroom, and later perfected in the workplace, but I have
realized since graduating that the idea of emotional intelligence is actually very
important, specifically, the ability to understand both nonverbal communication and
verbal communication that is so often found in the workplace. It would have been
helpful to develop this skill while in college, rather than on-the-job.” Findings of a 2010
survey by The American Management Association (AMA) support this notion, citing
that nearly 59% of managers and executives indicate it would be easier to develop the

18 The IUP Journal of Soft Skills, Vol. XI, No. 2, 2017

identified skills in students than it would be to develop them in currently employed
workers (Davidson, 2012).
While there appears to be fairly broad consensus on when soft skills development
should take place—before graduation—there is a lack of consensus as to how or where.
The business communication course is the obvious choice for where, and may be the
most suitable learning context, given the broad range of soft skills covered both at the
micro (writing, presenting, standard genres for business communication) and macro
level (rhetorical strategy, audience awareness, personal branding, employability). Yet,
there exist additional opportunities to support this learning with both curricular and
co-curricular initiatives such as building intentional soft skills development into the
entire business curriculum and making internships and other experiential practices part
of the standard degree plan. Renuga and Ezhilan concur that “soft skills training has
to be incorporated in the curriculum and it should be spread over all four years of
[a student’s] degree program” (2014, p. 103). High impact practices such as internships
(domestic and global), client-based projects, role-plays, and simulations can play a
prominent role in increasing job readiness and can be extremely useful in closing the
skills gap between academia and industry (Russ, 2009; Seymour and Ray, 2014;
Apparaju, 2016; and Tewari and Sharma, 2016). This soft skills gap, what Apparaju
(2016) terms “the mismatch,” may be attributed to a lack of student understanding of
workplace context and its skills demands. As Apparaju posits “a vast disconnect
emerges when the [business communication] course either fails to incorporate the
necessary skills or when it fails to address the context of the workplace” (2016, p. 26).
Clearly, internships and other experiential practices, where students have the
opportunity to work in situ, in real-time-real-world, may be incredibly helpful in
providing this context and creating opportunities for students to practice and develop
desirable soft skills.

Conclusion
Organizations with limited training budgets continue to seek workers who can “hit the
ground running.” Historical wisdom in job readiness research suggests that this need
for the ‘ready’ employee has always existed, and despite many efforts to shrink the skills
gap, it persists. Increasingly, however, both employers and new graduates are aware
of these necessary readiness skills and seem to agree on their importance. This creates
a perfect opportunity for business schools to foster curricular environments that support
soft skills achievement and provide both graduates and employers that important link
to complete the chain of successful employability.
Limitations: This study features important research questions that are highly relevant
to business education but it does so with limitations. The qualitative analysis of the
survey study is useful and yields very specific and distinct answers yet it lacks the
quantitative rigor of statistical analysis. The sample size is not expansive but is large
enough to draw significant inferences. Despite the limitations, the results and the overall

Beyond the Business Communication Course: A Historical Perspective of the Where, 19

Why, and How of Soft Skills Development and Job Readiness for Business Graduates
paper provide practical and applied value for guiding colleges and universities to be
more intentional in incorporating soft skills development in business and business
communication curricula.

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