Influence of soft skills on career development: Exploring performance appraisal as a mediating mechanism

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Performance appraisal plays a crucial mediating role in the complex interaction between soft skills and career development. This practice provides a comprehensive view of workers’ competencies and directly influences their professional trajectories. This investigation checked the significance of these competencies in career development, employing performance appraisal as a mediating mechanism. The sample comprised 262 employees in Portugal. Data were collected from a convenience sample using the snowball sampling method, in which participants were asked to invite their contacts to participate in the study. The questionnaire included the short skills inventory, the career growth scale, and the performance management scale. The more developed the soft skills, the greater the tendency for employees to progress in their careers. Performance appraisal has a significant influence on employees’ career trajectories, as the possibility of career advancement largely depends on their performance. The data further revealed that by mediating the relationship between soft skills and career progression, performance appraisal helps guide and support the organization’s strategic decisions. However, when the mediating variable is introduced into the model, the influence of soft skills on career development is no longer significant, indicating a full mediation effect. The results suggest that 26.8% of the possibility of progressing in the career is explained by the performance appraisal results. These results act as a critical link between soft skills and career development. Soft skills exert a significant influence on career development, and performance appraisal emerges as a valuable means to recognize and promote these competencies.

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    • Figure 1. Mediation model
    • Table 1. Sample characterization
    • Table 2. Descriptive statistics
    • Conceptualization
      Rosa Rodrigues, Andreia Dias
    • Data curation
      Rosa Rodrigues, Andreia Dias
    • Formal Analysis
      Rosa Rodrigues
    • Methodology
      Rosa Rodrigues, Andreia Dias
    • Project administration
      Rosa Rodrigues, Andreia Dias
    • Software
      Rosa Rodrigues
    • Supervision
      Rosa Rodrigues
    • Validation
      Rosa Rodrigues, Andreia Dias
    • Writing – original draft
      Rosa Rodrigues, Andreia Dias
    • Writing – review & editing
      Rosa Rodrigues, Andreia Dias
    • Investigation
      Andreia Dias
    • Resources
      Andreia Dias
    • Visualization
      Andreia Dias