Information technology is always volatile as new gadgets and innovation dominate the sector’s constantly shifting environment. In such ever changing landscape, meeting the IT employers’ skills need from the current and emerging IT workers’ skills has been a serious and genuine consideration. Human Resource practitioners and employers still find the graduates lacking or mismatching relevant soft skills competencies required in their job positions. This paper is an empirical investigation to determine how accurately IT students view the soft skills necessary to be a successful IT professional, and how well their perceptions match to those soft skills actually sought in IT market. Further, this study identifies the soft skills necessary to become successful IT professionals and the most common gaps from academia’s perspective. Results from this study can be useful to employers seeking specific work (soft) skills and to students seeking to fulfill the employers’ needs.

As the world has changed over the last century, so has the world of work. The very nature of work has changed and continues to change at a rapid rate. As it is well said by Jones (as quoted in Watson and Scott, 2004, p. 1), “A degree alone is not enough. Employers are looking for more than just technical skills and knowledge of a degree discipline. They particularly value skills such as communication, team working and problem-solving. Job applicants who can demonstrate that they have developed these skills will have a real advantage.” Therefore, to increase the graduates’ chances of obtaining decent jobs that match their education and training, universities need to equip their students with the necessary competencies to enter the labor market and to enhance their capacities to meet specific workplace demands.

Employers in India are facing a regular shortage of skilled professionals specifically in the field of technical education. Engineering graduates are skilled in their core domain but lack effective execution of their technical knowhow. Industry wants them to be industry-ready without any formal training, in the implementation of their projects. Therefore, engineering education is expected to cover a wider and varied spectrum of functions and knowledge to make the engineers industry-ready. It is also crucial as the domain of engineering is no longer limited only to the machines and engines. Engineers are expected to play the role of managers and team leaders to execute their assigned tasks by effectively handling the technical tools and the human capital in unison. In the current business scenario, engineers are to deal more with the humans than with the machines. Though engineering education is doing an exemplary job in preparing their graduates to be industry-ready, there are certain areas where the engineering graduates are lacking as per the expectations of the industry. These gaps between the abilities of graduating students and those expected by the industry are preventing them from succeeding in their careers.

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