Although 86% of employers in Bulgaria consider higher education important for successful professional development, the practical skills of recent university graduates remain their most serious deficit. This is according to a new analysis of data from two consecutive sociological surveys among employers, conducted in 2024 and 2025, prepared by the Open Society Institute – Sofia as part of the development of the Bulgarian University Ranking System.
The study provides insight into the needs of the employers, how they asses young professionals’ skills, and how they regard the role of artificial intelligence in the workplace.
Practical Skills – the Weakest Area
Employers evaluate the skills of newly hired university graduates on a scale from 0 to 10. For a second consecutive year, the highest score goes to foreign-language skills (6.2), followed by professional skills, including theoretical knowledge, logical thinking, working with text and data, and using equipment and software (between 5.3 and 5.5).
Practical skills remain firmly at the bottom of the ranking, with a score of just 3.4. Analytical abilities are also rated relatively low, including the ability to present arguments and explore a problem in depth (4.4 and 4.2 respectively).
“Recent university graduates perform satisfactorily in foreign languages and, to some extent, possess the necessary set of professional skills, however, the biggest problem remains the lack of practical experience, which they don’t evidently manage to acquire sufficiently during their studies,” remarks Dr Petya Braynova, author of the analysis.
Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace
The majority of employers do not believe that artificial intelligence can replace their employees. Attitudes, however, differ depending on employees’ level of education. Almost one third of employers believe that employees without higher education fall into a risk group that could be replaced by AI, while for university graduates this share is around one fifth.
People with secondary education are emerging as the most vulnerable group on the labour market. The largest share of surveyed employers believe they could be replaced by AI (32%) while the smallest share say that AI could not replace them or would do so only in exceptional cases (68%). By comparison, only 19% of employers believe that people with higher education could be replaced by AI on the labour market, while 81% believe this is not possible or would happen only in exceptional cases. Regarding people with primary education, 25% of employers believe they could be replaced by AI, while 72% believe there is no such possibility or that it would happen only in exceptional cases.
What Kind of Candidates Are Businesses Looking For?
The study shows that 81% of employers who hire university graduates also offer jobs to recent graduates.
The largest share of surveyed employers said they hire recent graduates from the following professional fields:
- Economics
- Electrical engineering, electronics and automation
- Administration and management
- Informatics and computer science
- Pedagogy
- Architecture, construction and geodesy
- Mechanical engineering
For success in the labour-market, employers most often recommend that young people study Informatics and computer science, Medicine, and the fields listed above – all of them are among the large professional fields in Bulgarian higher education, each with more than 3,000 active students.
Four professional groups stand out as particularly open to hiring recent graduates without prior experience: metallurgists and mechanical engineers, medical and healthcare workers, administrative workers, and technicians.
How Do Employers Find Candidates?
For another consecutive year, the largest share of surveyed employers share that when they need staff with higher education, they most often hire people they already know or who have been recommended by someone they know (54%). The second most common recruitment method is advertising vacancies on specialised recruitment websites (49%). Around 17% of employers share they find staff through social media advertisements or through labour offices. Only 7% reported contacting a university career centre.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The study highlights that although higher education continues to retain its high value for success in the labour market, the gap between the academic preparation of recent graduates and the actual needs of the labour market remains significant.
“The inclusion of more practical training, internships, and partnerships between higher education institutions and businesses could facilitate the transition from education to employment and increase the competitiveness of young specialists in the country,” says Dr Petya Braynova, author of the analysis.
About the Study
The analysis was prepared by Dr Petya Braynova from the Open Society Institute – Sofia, based on data from sociological surveys among employers conducted as part of the preparation of the Bulgarian University Ranking System for 2024 and 2025.
The fieldwork was carried out in May–June 2024 and June–July 2025. In each wave, more than 1 000 employers were surveyed through an online questionnaire. The data were weighted by geographic region and economic sector.
You can find the full text of the study here (in Bulgarian).
The Bulgarian University Ranking System for 2025 was updated by a team from the OSI-S consortium, comprising the Open Society Institute – Sofia and Sirma Solutions, at the request of the Ministry of Education and Science.
