Tímea Juhász

As the possession of soft skills is becoming an essential part of the basic skill set of entrants, it is undoubtedly essential to research and develop these skills. The purpose of this study was to examine how students studying at the largest agricultural university in Hungary perceive their soft skills to be in line with employers’ expectations, i.e. whether demand matches supply, in what qualities students feel strong, what employers expect, how well supply and demand in the agricultural labor market match in terms of soft skills. Furthermore, whether educational institutions are able to develop these qualities in students and what other possibilities there might be to strengthen these qualities. The research results confirmed that the university students in the sample perceive the quality of their soft skills to be influenced by several factors, including age, gender and work experience. They show that women over 40 with work experience tend to have stronger emotional soft skills, while men of the same age who have not started their careers are stronger in leadership skills. The study also concluded that students do not feel that current schooling in institutions can strengthen the soft skills expected by the labor market (the average on a five-point Likert scale was 2.74), while the development of these soft skills was considered by respondents to be as important as the development of hard skills (agreement was very high with an average of 4.52 on a five-point Likert scale).

Research in recent years has shown that IT-enabled companies have higher productivity than their competitors. The new and latest technological solutions enrich the range of tools available to workers, ensuring that information is always available, communication is easier, and customers are better served. At the same time, these opportunities also create psycho-social pressures that strain workers’ working and private lives and can lead to further problems of techno-addiction. The study aims to investigate the relationships between the characteristics of technostress and their combined impact on trust within the organization between human-human and human-technology relationships. The quantitative study involved 531 respondents. Responses were analyzed using IBM SPSS 28 and IBM AMOS 27. The results show that there is undoubtedly a close relationship and a mutually generating effect between technostress characteristics, which substantially impact trust within the organization. However, trust is still stronger in personal relationships than in human-technology relationships. According to the respondents, the level of preparedness, technological knowledge, and expectations influence trust in the use of technology, which also affects performance and work-life balance.

Acknowledgment
This study is supported by the Research Centre at Faculty of Business and Economics (No. PE-GTK-GSKK A095000000-4) of University of Pannonia (Veszprém, Hungary).

University internship is the transition between higher education and the labor market. The study was motivated by the fact that research on the effectiveness of internships is on the rise in many countries but is less widespread in Hungary, especially from the students’ perspective. The aim is to determine how students in business education choose a workplace for their internship, whether they consider their own employability or the management aspects of the workplace. The questionnaire was conducted in Budapest, Hungary, covering covering higher education institutions of economics (7 in total), with 406 participants. The focus is to build a model of the interaction between different variables: the development of students’ skills at the university, the specific internship placement, and the desirable work students would like to do during their internship. The results show no correlation between the type of skills students develop during their studies and the type of work they want to do during their internship. Moreover, the correlation between the soft skills they develop at work and those they acquire at university is only coincidental, therefore not supporting their employability. These results can be important for workplace management to effectively lead and inspire their teams, manage conflict, and communicate. The study offers implications for education policy, i.e., recommendations for changes to output requirements, which will also allow for developing training structures that are more responsive to employer needs.

The study aims to examine similarities and differences in the way business students from different cultural backgrounds perceive soft skills based on Geert Hofstede’s cultural model. Four business universities in Jordan and one in Hungary were included in the study. Both samples included 313 respondents. The main reason for selecting business students was that soft skills are essential for finding a job in the professional labor market. The quantitative analysis was carried out using a questionnaire, and statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software. The results confirmed a difference between Jordanian and Hungarian cultures in the perception of the importance of soft skills, which can be attributed to cultural differences. The Jordanian respondents gave the highest mean scores for their own skills in communication (M: 4.28), teamwork (M: 4.22), ethical skills (M: 4.17), and self-awareness (M: 4.17), while the Hungarian sample gave the highest mean score for teamwork (M: 4.29), ethical skills (M: 4.23), and empathy (M: 4.19). Furthermore, students also differed in terms of which skills they thought employers valued as necessary for a career starter. Jordanian young people gave the highest average score to responsibility (M: 4.12) and admitting when wrong (M: 4.41), while Hungarians gave the highest average score to communication (M: 4.13) and problem-solving (M: 4.10).