Enhancing Students’ Work Readiness through Soft Skills Development: A Pre-test-Post-test Evaluation

Abstract

Competition in the business and industrial sectors requires Vocational High School (SMK) graduates to master not only technical skills (hard skills) but also non-technical skills (soft skills). SMK Mambaul Ulum Pandaan, as a relatively new vocational school, faces challenges in preparing students for workforce entry, particularly in recruitment processes and Curriculum Vitae (CV) preparation. This Community Service program aimed to enhance students' work readiness through integrated training in three core soft skills: time management, professional communication, and CV preparation. The activity used a participatory training approach involving lectures, discussions, simulations, and hands-on practice, evaluated using a one-group pre-test–post-test design. A total of 25 students from Grade XI and Grade XII participated in the activity. The results showed an increase in the average scores of both groups, with Grade XI improving from 2.86 to 3.05 and Grade XII from 3.05 to 3.22. The N-Gain scores were 16.7% and 17.9%, respectively. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test yielded an Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed) value of 0.036, indicating a statistically significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores. Overall, the findings indicate a positive change in students’ work-readiness scores following the training, although the relatively modest N-Gain values suggest that the magnitude of improvement was limited.