Entrepreneurship as a tool to facilitate job placement for civil engineering students

Traditionally, civil engineering professionals have worked for public institutions and large construction companies. Nowadays, recent graduates of civil engineering have problems finding their first job despite the requirements of the degree. Creativity, collaboration, persuasion and emotional intelligence are the essential soft skills needed. Unfortunately, none of them appears in the civil engineering curriculum.

This work proposes to conduct the creation of small cooperative teams of students to face different challenges in line with the syllabus of one or several subjects. Thanks to this, students can increase the number of competencies developed during their academic life at the university. Nevertheless, they are able to apply technical knowledge while they gain professional experiences, improve their soft skills and enhance the ability to understand, use and manage their own emotions through active learning. Incorporating real-life technical problems, already solved or not, from different companies is the key to establishing alliances with enterprises that connect hard and soft skills.  In this way, the quality of the grade can be improved while the students keep learning key competencies of the subject allowing them to gain skills and professional experience. Furthermore, this activity can be the beginning of a start-up in an academic environment.

This research has shown the need for the development of soft skills in civil engineering students, both undergraduate and master's degrees, to promote entrepreneurship and self-employment as job opportunities. The creation of the teams, their management, the resolution of the different problems from real-life situations or adapted, the connection with different companies and institutions and the presentation of the results can be the key to the holistic development of future professionals. Including the possibility of entrepreneurship, since all the students questioned considered that they have improved their entrepreneurial competencies thanks to this experience.