From an English course to a professional journey

: creating a new path in the education market

Abstract

This research investigates the possibility of offering a new course that combines linguistic content with a more specialized component (such as soft skills or technical competencies) by the company EF Education First, a linguistic provider. This study focuses to the specific target of individuals aged 18-25 years old and the goal is to understand which combination of soft skills and language or computer science and language courses would be the most attractive to the target population. This study opens with a case study analysis, followed by benchmark analysis, and then proceeds with a qualitative analysis based on semi-structured interviews. These interviews involve not only EF’s managers but also HR managers from two non-competitive companies. The objective is to understand the skills required for junior profiles. Finally, the investigation moves on to a quantitative analysis of a questionnaire, using SPSS application. First and foremost, the concept of a skill gap was analyzed. It has emerged that over the majority of the sample do not believe they have acquired the necessary skills to enter the job market, which represents a good starting point for the purpose of the analysis. Secondly, using a cluster analysis, the sample was divided into clusters, identifying the Socratic learners as the cluster to target. It was found that the Socratic learners prefer the combination of language and soft skills (also giving a positive rating to technical skills + language), in-person and with a maximum course duration of 2 months, with the option to choose course modules.

Date of Award	17 Oct 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ricardo Reis (Supervisor)