Philippine E-Journals

Soft Skills of Students Demonstrated during Internship

Luke Ivan B. Moro | Florante E. Delos Santos | Rey S. Medenilla

 

Abstract:

This study was conducted to determine the soft skills students were able to demonstrate in their host training establishments during their internship as viewed by their immediate superiors. The study is exploratory in nature and made use of reports that summarized the comments of supervisors on the strengths and weaknesses of the trainee as observed during the duration of the internship. The report covers the OJT performance of students for SY 2017-2018 and 2018-2019. A total of 1,019 positive feedbacks and 948 negative comments were analyzed and dissected into seven attributes: professionalism/integrity, reliability, communication, problem solving/adaptability, teamwork/interpersonal, self-direction, and creativity. Results of the study show that the top two attributes that were most valued by supervisors were reliability and professionalism/integrity. The same attributes were also the top two supervisors viewed as most lacking among trainees. This study recommends further studies that will investigate the level of engagement of organizations in the internship specifically in the development of soft skills of trainees as previous studies suggested that it is influenced by the quality of the professional relationship between the trainee and supervisor and their ability to provide students a wide range of exposure.