The purpose of this study is to identify the soft skills, relevant to the future talent pool in the information technology (IT) sector. Further, the study aims to investigate soft skills gaps among students which are hampering the availability of talent. Soft skills traits were first identified through a literature review. Then, using a structured questionnaire, we surveyed 269 IT professionals working in five IT companies and 329 students pursuing degrees in the IT/CS from 12 technical institutes. The analysis was performed using principal component analysis and an independent t test. We examined important soft skills such as personal traits, leadership, interpersonal skills, team skills, enterprising skills, and organizational skills. The independent t test results showed a perception gap between professionals and students regarding the importance of soft skills. This study contributes to the literature by adding to the understanding of critical soft skills in IT sector. It underlines the partnership between educational institutions and the IT industry to address this gap. This partnership will benefit all stakeholders. We argue that although talent management is dealt with at the industry level, academia play an important role in making this process easier and effective by developing the desired skills in students. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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