Soft Skills Archives - The Future of Work Exchange

The Convergence of Soft Skills and Skills-Based Hiring (and the [Near] Future of Recruitment)

Talent Acquisition by Christopher J. Dwyer on 11/15/2023

Over the past several years, there has been a raging debate around what is seemingly more important for a business’ overall success regarding its workforce: “hard skills” or “soft skills.” The longstanding argument for top-billing between hard skills and soft skills has been a defining narrative in the realms of talent acquisition, recruitment, talent management, and overall workforce planning.

An Evolving Workplace Shifts Traditional Skills Requirements

Historically, hard skills, encompassing specific technical proficiencies and measurable expertise, have often taken precedence in hiring decisions. These skills (think areas such as coding, data analysis, or engineering) were traditionally deemed as tangible indicators of overall alignment between pure job prerequisites and the ability (or potential) for a candidate to meet those requirements.

However, the evolving nature of workplaces, marked by globalization, automation, and the rise of innovative technology platforms and tools, has shifted the balance. The scales tipped even more dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, further altering how businesses planned around “work” given the pandemic’s tremendous, far-reaching implications and impacts. As the Future of Work Exchange has often written, the pure influence of humanity within the professional environment has become table stakes for business leaders who want to both manage effectively and drive real talent retention.

Skills-Based Hiring Offers Holistic Approach

Soft skills, comprising communication, collaborative abilities, emotional intelligence, and relationship management, are increasingly recognized as indispensable assets in fostering effective, functional teamwork and organizational success. The dichotomy between hard and soft skills is giving way to a more holistic perspective, acknowledging that a harmonious integration of both skill sets is essential for thriving in the contemporary professional landscape. The synergistic interplay between technical proficiency and interpersonal finesse is now understood as the key to unlocking individual and collective potential in a rapidly changing world…one that places the utmost emphasis on skills as the catch-all determinant for talent acquisition.

Skills-based hiring is not an entirely new concept, but rather one that has become more refined over the past two or three years for one major reason: it is crucial now due to rapid technological changes, remote work dynamics, talent shortages, and the need for diverse, adaptable candidates in an ever-evolving labor market.

Adaptability and the Future of Recruitment

Adaptability is one notion that cannot be overlooked heading into 2024. Talent and the world of work shift in near-real time, forcing global businesses to consistently reevaluate their workforce and staffing strategies to keep pace with the competition. In this dynamic environment, organizations that prioritize adaptability not only navigate technological advancements, but pivot to changing skill demands and diverse work arrangements more effectively, positioning themselves as industry leaders capable of seizing emerging opportunities and staying ahead in a rapidly-evolving marketplace.

How does this play into the concept of skills-based hiring? Businesses that view the whole picture of a candidate and take into account both hard expertise and soft skills are the ones that will ultimately thrive during times of enterprise evolution. This, essentially, is the very future of recruitment: a convergence at the crossroads of hard skills, soft skills, skills-based hiring, and, yes, adaptability. Beyond the traditional emphasis on hard skills, the recognition of soft skills — like flexibility, effective communication, and emotional intelligence — has gained prominence in shaping collaborative, effective, productive, and responsive workplaces.

Skills-based hiring strategies, which can pinpoint specific competencies across both the hard and soft skill arenas, empower organizations to align talent with the fluid demands of evolving roles, enhancing overall agility and competitiveness. This, too, is the perfect entry-point for artificial intelligence to transform the way businesses react to “skills DNA” and integrate the next generation of skills-based hiring into the greater recruitment strategies.

At the heart of this evolution is the paramount importance of malleability within the confines of skills-based hiring. As industries undergo rapid transformation and technological advances reshape job landscapes, successful recruitment hinges on candidates who embody a harmonious blend of hard and soft skills, as well as hiring initiatives that embrace the principles of skills-based hiring and possess the adaptive prowess essential to navigate the ever-changing workplace of the future.

Soft Skills Becoming the ‘Real Skills’ in the Workplace

Business Leadership Diversity and Inclusion General Insights HR Talent by John Yuva on 06/19/2023

For enterprises to succeed today, it requires a focus on skills beyond the vocational. This doesn’t imply that sales, procurement, or financial expertise are unnecessary or less important to an organization’s operational success. Rather, it means that “soft skill” attributes are now equally critical as hard skills within the workforce. In the competitive marketplace, agility, flexibility, and resilience are imperative to weather ongoing volatility and uncertainty. What enables this? It is soft skills, or as Seth Godin, entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker, calls them — real skills.

Soft Skills Transformed

The growing criticality of soft skills seems a natural part of the Future of Work transition. Skills such as empathy, communication (oral and written), adaptability, collaboration, leadership, and strategic thinking are now table stakes for managers and executives. However, it’s no longer the higher ranks where real skills are necessary and desired. These skills are now core attributes for any role in today’s organizations. Imagine a workplace where, regardless of role, soft-skill development was an integral workforce strategy.

This means that real skills such as communication, collaboration, and strategic thinking are occurring at every enterprise level and among employees and project teams. Essentially, soft skills become core principles that drive organizational success and competitiveness. Making that vision a reality, however, requires a shift in executive behavior.

Progress Begins Today

There is evidence that much work must be done. Godin notes in an excerpt from his book The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams, that …“69% of managers are uncomfortable communicating with their employees.” This is a startling number. Communication skills at the managerial level are essential for communicating strategy, responsibilities, and performance effectiveness. Lack of communication severely impacts collaborative efforts and strategic decision-making.

Remarking on the statistic, Godin says, “Communicating with employees is uncomfortable because we’ve built systems of compliance and dominance that make it difficult. We ask people to leave their humanity at the door, then use authority to change behavior. We overlay corporate greed and short-term thinking with a human desire to create work that matters.”

Instead, the Future of Work paradigm promotes empathetic leadership that supports open communication and professional growth. The systems reliant on compliance and dominance are transitioning into workplace models that value teamwork and innovative approaches to solving enterprise challenges.

Everything Can Be Taught

It is often believed that only vocational skills can be taught. This is simply not true. Even Godin says leaders “underinvest in this [soft skills] training, fearful that these things are innate and can’t be taught.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Environmental factors as well as our own experiences with managers can shape how we communicate and problem-solve.

An enterprise that embraces an inclusive and diverse workplace can be successful in training employees in real skills. With behaviors modeled and supported by the executive suite, employees are more inclined to adapt and follow the lead of those they look to for guidance. Soft skills are real skills with real strategic impact. Model, train, and reinforce the power of soft skills in every organizational environment.

This article is one of several we’ve covered on soft skills. The Future of Work Exchange recognizes that real skills have real impacts on the Future of Work and workforce strategies. As more enterprises focus on soft skills as critical attributes to employment candidacy, it opens doors to technologies to better measure real skill competencies and performance. Those innovations will only strengthen how organizations source, hire, and retain their workers.

Develop Your Soft Skills for the Future

Business Leadership General Insights HR Procurement Talent by John Yuva on 09/29/2022

When I think about the Future of Work, communication, collaboration, and innovation immediately come to mind. There is an elicited sense of interconnectedness between companies and their suppliers, leaders and their workforce, and among employees themselves. What is the success enabler of the Future of Work? If you tear back the curtain, it’s soft skills that are driving business outcomes and workforce interactions.

Think this is a new revelation? Not quite. In 1918, the Carnegie Foundation published Charles Riborg Mann’s A Study of Engineering Education, which cited that 85% of a person’s job success is a product of soft skills and that only 15% of success is based on technical knowledge. Even more than 100 years ago, the criticality of workplace soft skills was being emphasized. However, the pandemic helped bring soft skills into sharper focus as other Future of Work elements (e.g., flexibility, remote work, empathetic leadership) became mainstream concepts and areas of importance.

Soft Skills in the Age of COVID-19

Our new normal is a volatile, fast-moving business environment. Companies must adopt a more proactive approach toward market change and customer demand. As such, the silos that exist within the four walls of many enterprises must come down. Workplace silos are the barriers to soft skill execution.

Even leading up to the pandemic, LinkedIn’s 2019 Global Talent Trends report revealed that soft skills (91%) were the top trend transforming the workplace as cited by talent professionals. Soft skills, such as creativity, adaptability, and time management, are critical to the future of recruiting and HR. In the same LinkedIn report, several vital statistics emerged:

Eighty percent of survey respondents said soft skills are increasingly important to company success.
When hiring talent, 91% of respondents said soft skills were as important or more so than hard skills.
In the case of a bad hire, 89% agreed that the employee typically lacked soft skills.

Since the pandemic, the need for soft skills has only amplified. The remote workforce environment during the previous two years brought soft skills into the spotlight as employees adjusted to communicating and collaborating virtually with colleagues and partners. Learning to work together on a project as a remote team or understanding the emotional needs of your team members amid a pandemic reinforced why soft skills are essential. For some, it brought attention to further invest in their soft skills toolset.

Essential Soft Skills for the Future of Work

Navigating today’s workplace with both a remote and in-person workforce requires a host of soft skills to operate efficiently and productively. The following are several soft skills and how they affect the Future of Work.

Emotional intelligence. At its core, emotional intelligence is the ability to make human connections and understand the perspectives of others. This soft skill is essential from the highest levels of the enterprise downward. Empathetic leadership is now a desired trait for senior leaders and people managers. However, without possessing emotional intelligence, it will be difficult for those managers to grasp how their actions affect the team dynamic or to sense the feelings of others. It is crucial that employees at every level continually develop their emotional intelligence skill set. How you react to challenging situations or adapt to change speaks volumes about your level of EI. Do not underestimate the consequences of hiring candidates who lack emotional intelligence.

Creativity. Some may consider creativity a soft skill reserved for the marketing department or other content/design-oriented functions. Not so. Creativity refers to assessing a situation or challenge and developing a solution that’s unique or outside the box. Consider procurement and its ability to devise alternative sourcing channels in the face of adversity. Often, those solutions are outside what companies have considered in the past. Automation continues to replace certain job tasks; however, technology lacks the ability to “think” creatively like humans. Thus, creativity is a soft skill that will always trump the “0”s and “1”s of a machine. Seldom does a situation not benefit by asking: Have you thought about doing it another way?

Critical thinking and analysis. Data is all around us. How we gather data and interpret it to make decisions is a valuable soft skill. Procurement and HR receive an abundance of data on workforce output and operational needs. Critical thinking and analysis can lead to the discovery of significant productivity trends the company can then address. The ability to use data to evaluate situations and offer solutions is a soft skill that will always be in demand. You want those people who can find an outlier among a sea of data and propose innovative solutions.

Adaptability and learnability. Technology is evolving quickly and processes are redesigned frequently. The ability to roll with changes and adapt is a vital soft skill. There’s no longer room for the excuse “we’ve always done it this way.” In some cases, companies must reinvent themselves to survive a market or industry transition. Adjusting successfully to change of any magnitude can help put employees on the path to leadership roles.

Learning what needs to be known is also a soft skill imperative. When companies seemingly overnight went remote operationally, it forced those who are uncomfortable with change and learning new skills to make that transition. Going forward, companies should use the pandemic as an example to motivate employees about their ability to adapt and learn.

Assess Candidate Soft Skills

With just a few soft skills described previously, how can companies assess the soft skills of job candidates? In the 2019 LinkedIn report, 57% percent of respondents said their company lacked a formal process for soft skill assessment. While it can be challenging to assess, there are methods to evaluate a job candidate’s soft skills.

First and foremost, companies should identify what soft skills are most pertinent to their workforce. Company surveys and interviews can help HR determine those specific skill sets to then build questions into talent screening and interviewing processes. LinkedIn identified online tools, such as Koru and Pymetrics, that screen candidates for soft skills.

During the interview process, not only ask candidates what soft skills they think will benefit the role but prepare an exercise to put those skills into action. It may be a project that requires working alongside potential team members to gauge collaborative and teamwork effectiveness. Introduce problem-solving challenges that are specific to the role to ascertain candidates’ critical thinking and cognitive flexibility soft skills.

Technical skills and knowledge (hard skills) remain important workforce attributes. However, soft skills enable employees to learn hard skills if they don’t already exist. A workforce with strong soft skills can weather the storms with adaptability, critical and creative thinking, collaboration and coordination, and compassion.