Extracurricular student activity and its impact on developing students' job competencies. The case of students working at BEST Gdansk

<p>With practical abilities (mostly soft skills) currently gaining importance in professional endeavours, university students need to acquire and improve competencies expected by their potential, future employers, as they may not be able to fully develop them during traditional university courses. This study aims to determine whether the extracurricular activity of students influences the development of job competencies. To test the hypothesis that such type of activity impacts the development of these competencies, an analysis of the basic framework of extracurricular activity was conducted, followed by a survey. As members of a student organisation operating by the Gdańsk University of Technology, the respondents were presented with a questionnaire and asked to assess the level of 12 chosen competencies before and while working at the organisation. The results showed that all participants experienced growth in their level of competencies, which illustrates that the extracurricular activity of students positively influences the development of job competencies.</p>