Employers' comment on competence of trade professional: Implications for college education

This research aims to reform mode of college education by exploring employers' comment on competence of trade professional. Face-to-face interviews using self-designed questionnaire were conducted in Zhejiang province. The results reveal that in the view of employers trade professional should be provided with eight categories of competence, i.e. basic commercial skill, personal ability, expression ability, market investigation skill, academic ability, bargaining ability, agency tackling ability, and contract implementing ability, implying that general commercial ability is more important than professional ability. It could be concluded that education mode focused on training of professional skills contributes little to the satisfaction of employers of trade professional. Current education mode of trade professional should be amended according to the market demand.