Report on the Results from Interviews with employers

CONDUCTED TO GAIN DEEPER INSIGHT INTO EMPLOYERS’ NEEDS IN THE AREA OF ENTREPRENEURIAL COMPETENCES IN THE CONTEXT OF MACRO-LEVEL CHANGES

The purpose of this study is to learn from employers in diverse European countries what competences they are currently looking for on the labour market to be able to develop new courses that would better respond to the needs of the business environment and develop entrepreneurial competences.

Enterprises participating in the study bring in real-life experience and knowledge necessary to develop courses and teaching approaches in HEIs to ensure higher-level entrepreneurial competences of graduates which translate into their employability in a constantly changing global labour market (considering the macro-level changes).

In order to achieve the above-stated aim and gather in-depth knowledge on missing entrepreneurial competences in the context of macro changes, structured interviewing has been selected as a research method, and an open-ended questionnaire has been chosen as a research tool. The questionnaire consists of 10 open-ended questions designed to capture the main dimensions of entrepreneurial competences concerning internationalisation and macro-level changes.

In summary, the analysis of respondents’ questionnaires has brought us to the following conclusions which may be treated as recommendations for entrepreneurship education. In order to make entrepreneurship education effective and responsive to the needs of business environment, we do recommend:

  • Combining theoretical knowledge on entrepreneurship with business practice,
  • Striking the right balance between educating specialists and providing a well-defined expertise demanded by employers and more general education with broad (entrepreneurial) competences,
  • Including technological and digital aspects into entrepreneurship education,
  • Including knowledge management practices into entrepreneurship education,
  • Enhancing communication and collaboration skills,
  • Increasing the share of apprenticeships and (vocational) trainings in higher education programs,
  • Internationalisation in higher education,
  • Focusing on understanding and accepting cultural differences.