Interior design, like other applied disciplines, has a clear career cycle requiring education and professional experience before becoming eligible for examination. Internships are often encouraged in academic curriculums for increased career placement and enhancement of student learning outcomes; they also serve as a benchmark for academic programs to evaluate their curriculum and its relevance to practice. As the design industry rapidly shifts the scope and needs in projects, it becomes more difficult for academic programs to assess practitioners’ values as they relate to recent interns and entry–level hires. Using a social constructivist approach, this longitudinal study aims to better understand practitioners’ perceptions of soft and hard skill sets necessary for emerging interior design professionals. This study utilizes content analysis to evaluate practitioners’ responses (N = 260) from 2006 to 2014 through a survey questionnaire that consisted of open–ended questions aimed to evaluate senior–level interior design students’ performance during the required 400–hour internship at a mid–sized Southeastern university. The findings showed that soft skills were more often listed as positive attributes where interns performed exceedingly well. Furthermore, soft skills affected the willingness of practitioners to hire interns.
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