The development of soft skills in the provision of competitiveness of graduates

The most strong competition in the labor market is in the segment of young people without work experience. The paper is devoted to the development of perspective directions of the enhance the competitiveness of specialists with higher education, developing their socio-emotional, cognitive skills "soft skills". On the basis of the analysis of the definition "competence" the authors substantiate the necessity of development within higher education personal characteristics (socio-emotional and cognitive skills) of future graduates in line with labour market needs. It provides the experience of leading Ukrainian universities in the creation and introduction in educational process of special training course on "Soft skills" aimed to develop socio-emotional and cognitive abilities of students. In the paper it proposed the main directions of improving the system of training the specialists for the enhance their competitiveness in the labour market: use competence approach to the development of standards for higher education; the introduction of continuous monitoring of the needs of employers in determining the competence of professionals; reorientation of educational content (educational and vocational programs, work programs of disciplines) on the characteristics of effective learning in terms of competences formed; the inclusion in curricula of preparation of specialists of the disciplines contributing to the development of cognitive and socioemotional skills; development of tools for inspecting the degree of formation of cognitive and socioemotional skills (soft skills).