Employers seek better soft skills from next generation of workers
Employers seek better soft skills from next generation of workers
Emotions run high at the fall Carnegie Mellon University STEM career fair in Pittsburgh. Hundreds of young adults put their soft skills to the test as they mill about pitching themselves to recruiters.
“They’re waiting in line, they’re holding their resume shaking, they’re trying to memorize their elevator pitch,” said Sean McGowan, employer relations director at Carnegie’s career development center.
McGowan tries to pump them up, emphasizing people skills to students.
“Tell a story. Make an actual connection. Don’t worry about just listing off all of the technical skills you have from your resume,” he said.
It’s easier said than done.
Arti Jain, a 25-year-old electrical and computer engineering master’s student, attended the recent STEM career fair at the school.
“It’s just a very taxing event,” she said, explaining her experience standing in line to talk to recruiter after recruiter, hearing students in front of her in line pitching themselves again and again.
“At this school, everyone is so talented, so smart. You don’t have any brand-name advantage because everyone goes to the same school,” she said.
She tries to differentiate herself, emphasizing her work ethic and enthusiasm for learning new things.
“Those are two soft skills that I think help me succeed in whatever role I would take, but that is something I don’t know how you communicate to recruiters, to hiring managers, especially in a setting where it seems like all they want to see is a couple keywords on a piece of paper,” she said.
While technology continues to rapidly transform the workplace and the jobs marketplace, soft skills don’t just help workers get jobs, they are critical for adapting to technology, growing into new roles and working effectively with a team. But for college students who had to endure a period of pandemic-induced isolation during their schooling and generally take a more casual approach to work, there’s a disconnect between their soft skills and what employers are looking for.
“When it comes to post-pandemic, I’ll definitely say that I’ve heard from employers that they feel that there’s a more casual communication standpoint versus professional communication,” McGowan said.
Employers have told him Generation Z workers — those born between 1997 to 2012 — can be more distracted and may struggle more making eye contact. At the same time, he sees the younger generation of workers craving in-person experiences at a time when many jobs remain fully or partially remote, and generative AI has drained the humanity out of the job application process.
“We are living in an application-volume society right now,” McGowan said. “We have students applying to hundreds and hundreds of jobs.”
He’s pushing students on building relationships and being the kind of person that an employer would want to work with on a project 40 hours a week — hiring managers are looking for a team member. But there’s only so much he can do, as working autonomously, critical thinking and creativity are skills that develop over time and are hard to teach on a work site.
This deficit of soft skills among recent graduates has been measured at a national level.
According to surveys from 2023 and 2024 by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, students are overestimating their own soft skills in relation to how employers perceive them. When both groups were asked about student communication skills, for example, students said their competency was at 79.4%, while employers rated these students at just 55.2%.
Employers also scored students relatively low in leadership and self-development, even as soft skills are playing an increasingly important role in certain fields.
From the talent management side, Thomas Vick with talent firm Robert Half has watched the role of soft skills transform in the past two decades or so in the IT field.
“It was really for the longest time, mostly, if not entirely, about the person’s technical skills,” he said.
But soft skills are becoming more important as technological change accelerates.
“Especially when you look at now generative AI and other things that are advancing at a rapid pace, someone’s ability to be able to adapt, change, learn and invest in themselves is becoming extremely crucial,” he said.
Schools are adapting to better prepare the next generation of workers.
Texas Christian University in Fort Worth is piloting a mandatory career development program for business students that will help them develop soft skills and career readiness.
“It’s doing group projects around interviews, the job search, creating a resume, crafting a cover letter, networking with alumni, all of those different things in a course setting,” said Mike Caldwell, executive director of the school’s career development center.
While he said soft skills have always been important, he’s noticed a new emphasis on that human touch. Like at career fairs. A decade ago, there was talk that they were outdated; nowadays TCU’s career fairs are the place to be.
“We’ve been at max capacity for the last few years. Never than before I think people want that in-person connection,” he said.
The hope is that their pilot program can help students bring those soft skills to career fairs and beyond.
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