‘Soft Skills’ in the workplace

Ray Dalio and the soft skills sorting hat. Last month hedge fund mogul and team performance influencer, Ray Dalio, put his name to a new online personality test aimed at identifying a candidate’s ‘soft’ skills and personality traits. Focusing on the ‘soft’ skills of candidates has long been a part of the recruitment process at Bridgewater, and the news that Dalio is branching out beyond his firm to promote this approach has reignited interest in the topic.

Soft skills on the up. Over the last 10 to 15 years, a growing number of jobs across different industries have become either more or fully automated. New York Times tech journalist and columnist Kevin Roose cited the example of AI software capable of writing 300 million news stories a year. Writing in Forbes, HR columnist Yolanda Lau believes that the growing automation in business has led to a premium being put on those skills that machines are not capable of replicating, i.e., ‘soft’ skills. Empathy, integrity, and resilience, among others, are cited as crucial characteristics. Management author Debra Stevens explains that many applicants, particularly younger ones, are often surprised by this with many believing tech-heavy CVs are the key to standing out and landing the best jobs.

Like Ray Dalio’s firm, some businesses have prioritized soft skills in their recruitment for a while. In an interview with Glassdoor in 2018, Greg Muccio, the Head of Talent Acquisition at US airline Southwest, credits prioritizing ‘soft’ skills over technical skills in their recruitment process as key to making it one of the best companies to work for in the US. He believes companies can easily train hard skills, but it is a lot harder to teach intangible attitudes, attitudes which, at the airline, make up the ‘Southwest Way’ (read our industry interview with Greg on the topic later in this month’s edition).

Prioritizing soft skills can have major benefits for an organization. Edward Beltran, CEO of culture change organization, Fierce Conversations, argues most leaders feel the development of their employee’s soft skills can deliver a higher return on investment. A survey he conducted last year in partnership with the HR Research Institute of 261 HR professionals found 85 per cent agreed soft skills were more important to the long-term success of their organization. The only issue is that because they are intangible, they are harder to determine.

The ‘soft’ skills CV. So how can applicants tell prospective employers about their ‘soft’ skills? In an article in the Irish Times in 2018, Paul Vance, the Head of Resourcing at KPMG Ireland – and the author of this month’s IMO – says that candidates need to emphasize experience outside of a learning environment to appeal to recruiters. Experiences such as travelling abroad or engaging in community projects can help to develop key skills such as communication and problem-solving which are highly valued by employers. In the same article, Eimear Power of law firm Arthur Cox agrees on the need for out-of-classroom experience on the CV, as the structured approach to problem-solving found in learning environments doesn’t necessarily work in the corporate world where problems are often dynamic and complex.

However, some employers may feel that no matter what it said on a CV, such intangible skills are too difficult to ascertain from a list of a candidate’s experience. In an interview with SwissInfo, Professor Marcello Mortillaro from the University of Geneva outlines a test he has designed to assess a candidate’s emotional intelligence for a role, rather than having to guess from a CV.