The need for soft skills for ph.d.’s in software engineering

Ph.D. students within the area of Software Engineering often work in very confined and focused subareas. However, studies show that if the Ph.D. student aims at working in industry later on, the need for the so-called soft skills is high. This paper concludes on two surveys made to understand whether Ph.D. students within the ‘Erasmus +’ project Joint Programs and Framework for Doctoral Education in Software Engineering perceived the soft skills to be of importance for them to learn. The conclusions are that the students are aware of the soft skills but often do not consider it to be of importance to formally train these.