- Soft skills are things like communication and leadership that can feel intangible.
- But more employers are looking for workers to have or get trained on these abilities.
Maybe you're a people person. Maybe not.
Increasingly, your boss or a potential employer wants to know the answer. Questions around so-called soft skills — things like communication and leadership — have become more pressing because the pandemic shook up so much about how we do our jobs.
Think about what's changed: More of us are working remotely at least some of the time. Fewer of us feel engaged in what we do. And while we've left behind the speed-dating job market of a couple years ago when people were giving their two weeks' at record levels, some employers are still having trouble pulling in — and keeping — the people they need.
For many bosses, part of the fix is finding people who have the stuff we were supposed to learn growing up, career experts told Insider. That means those of us who aren't great at showing our softer side at work could find it harder to snag, or even keep, a job.
The trouble with soft skills is we all think we've got 'em. But as Carrie Fisher pointed out in "When Harry Met Sally," everybody thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor but they couldn't possibly all have such things. So some of us will have to bone up. How you write that email, how you participate in a meeting, or how you handle that jerk of a client could matter more than how well you code or pull together a slide deck.
"What we're developing is a whole generation of people who don't even know what soft skills mean because they assume the whole world is about the tools that they have," Norman Bacal, author of "Take Charge: The Skills That Drive Professional Success," told Insider in reference to communication technology.
The good news is we can sharpen our soft skills, Bacal said.
That's what the bosses seem to want. Management, communication, and customer service are the top three in-demand job skills for 2023, according to LinkedIn. The job-search engine Adzuna recently reviewed ads for jobs paying over $200K and found the No. 1 soft skill employers were looking for was someone who was "energetic." Take that, quiet quitting.
James Neave, head of data science at Adzuna, compares soft skills to people skills. He told Insider employers are looking closer at job candidates' abilities around the squishy stuff. Being strong in areas like communication, leadership, and teamwork can be linked to longevity in a job, greater potential for moving into management, and an ability to build relationships. Employers also see these attributes as indicators people will stay more tied into what they do, he said.
"It's a slight reaction against disengagement that I think some employers have felt from their workforce," Neave said of the focus on soft skills.
AI will mean we have to get better at this
Greg Selker, managing director and North American technology practice leader at the executive search firm Stanton Chase, told Insider that employers increasingly realize that they have to consider more than just whether a worker delivers on a task. "You also have to then look at how this person gets their job done, not just the results that they produce," he said. "That leads directly into these areas of the so-called soft skills."
Selker said that because soft skills can be observed, they can be measured, even if somewhat subjectively. But, he said, as employers train key workers on assessing soft skills, the evaluations can become more concrete. Measuring soft skills can then become more like evaluating hard skills.
"It really is a shift in thinking then to say, 'Can we observe these soft skills?" he said. "The answer is yes, we can."
Selker said as automation takes on bigger roles in many jobs, the gigs many of us have will shift to focus more on things like strategy. "The people in those jobs will have a higher bar that will need to be met in terms of their ability to achieve those softer skills," he said.
Training can help us improve
Renée Pizzarello, who is a recruiter for senior- and manager-level jobs in accounting and finance, told Insider many employers are stepping up their focus on soft skills because so many of us have become bad at basics like communication. It's happened as our informal social media and texting habits have followed us to our jobs.
"It doesn't matter where you are at work. People write a lazy message to you all the time. It isn't like a constructed 'I'm gonna think through what I need to say.' People literally have no filter," she said. "So that is a breakdown in communication."
To help plug potential gaps in workers' skills, some employers are rolling out how to's on the particulars of interacting with others. KPMG conducts training, particularly for younger workers. The pandemic meant that many Gen Zers, as they started their careers, didn't get the face-to-face interactions at work that might have allowed them to further develop their soft skills. KPMG's lessons cover topics like how to present to clients, what background you should have on video calls, and how to write a professional email.
Neave, from Adzuna, said workers who can demonstrate to their bosses and potential employers that they can conduct themselves well will have an advantage as tech like AI marches deeper into the workplace.
"If you have these types of soft skills, not only are you kind of more employable right now, but you're almost like future-proofing your employability for the next five, 10 years when things are really going to change quite dramatically," Neave said.