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Students and ICT professionals compared notes on soft skills at a VIRTASK workshop in Vilnius

April 26, 2026

On April 2026, VILNIUS TECH hosted a face-to-face soft skills workshop in Vilnius as part of the Erasmus+ project VIRTASK – Virtual Training for Applied Soft Skills. Ten vocational (VET) students and ten ICT professionals, employers and teachers spent the day discussing which soft skills matter most in ICT-related jobs – and where young specialists are least prepared.

The Vilnius event is one of five national workshops organised by VIRTASK partners in Lithuania, Serbia, Romania, Türkiye and Ireland, all following the same design. Participants rated 30 soft skills by importance, with professionals also rating how well prepared junior colleagues are in each of them. They then selected their personal Top 10, took part in a facilitated focus group and worked through sector case studies from education, tourism, healthcare, finance and software.

The results point to a clear pattern. Professionals and employers rated decision-making, independent organisation of work and setting priorities as the areas where junior ICT staff fall furthest behind expectations, with communication with clients and non-technical users close behind. Students described the same problem from their side: seven of the ten said that “school does not teach us to speak with people”, and several admitted they hesitate to ask questions at work for fear of looking incompetent.

The two groups also set different priorities. Professionals repeatedly chose conflict resolution as a key skill, while none of the students did. Oral communication and empathy did not make either group’s Top 10, yet both appeared among the largest measured gaps – a reminder that the skills people think they need and the skills they actually lack are not always the same.

The Lithuanian findings have been compiled in a national report and, together with the results from the other four countries, feed into a cross-country analysis that will define VIRTASK’s training modules and VR scenarios.

More about the project: here

VIRTASK (No. 2025-1-LT01-KA220-VET-000356223) is co-funded by the European Union under the Erasmus+ programme. Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the National Agency.

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