Today’s era is a challenging career time to enter the workforce. The old path followed by parents of young people today – earning a couple of college degrees or learning a professional and technical skill, then landing a relevant job and staying in the same place for an entire career – is outdated and no longer. viable. Not only do most aspiring people to join today’s workforce need to specialize in specific job-related skill sets, they will also need to upgrade and cross-over skills as they change jobs, and even industries, frequently. in their careers.
This new workforce, then, needs a broad mix of skills for professional and business success. Companies that hire a workforce with a greater diversity of skills will have higher rates of innovation and overall productivity, and are much more likely to be successful in the world of tomorrow. These days, a college degree or even two is not necessarily a sufficient tool to give you instant and sustained success in the professional world. Nor will years of hands-on experience at your job make it that way, unless you add a little more.
The simple reason for this is that the currently most in-demand skills that employers are looking for are “soft skills.” Also known today as employability skills, soft skills are business and human connection skills and translate well across industries and occupations. These include essential cooperative skills such as communication and teamwork, as well as managerial and leadership skills such as problem solving, emotional judgment, professional ethics, global citizenship, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence. Companies like Google are currently evaluating something called “learning ability,” and this trend will only continue as more and more companies realize the advantage of a good team trained in soft skills.
Key industry experts and detailed data analyzed by Deloitte Access Economics, for example, show that international demand for soft skills is growing and will continue to grow as technology, globalization and demographic changes shape a new world. of business competition. Deloitte Access Economics forecasts that soft-skill-intensive occupations will account for two-thirds of all jobs by 2030, growing at a rate 2.5 times higher than any other job that requires other skills. Research from the Society for Human Resource Management has also found that employers are beginning to care more about a potential employee’s soft skills than technical skills. Research from Harvard University shows that 85% of job success – already – comes from these skills and only 15% from technical skills. An MIT Sloan study found that training in these skills can improve individual and organizational productivity. Similarly, in an internal study, Google found that its top performing teams were those made up of people strong in such skills, including good communication, collaboration, and empathetic leadership. Deloitte reported that soft skills are becoming so important that by 2030, about 2/3 of all jobs will require soft skills-intensive employees.
These types of skills facilitate human connections, build relationships, provide visibility to the company and more and more employers are recognizing the importance of taking advantage of these broader benefits through these skills in their employees. Simply put, in today’s world you may be the best at your technical subject, but if you don’t develop the right soft skills, then you are limiting your chances of future career success. The workplace has not only changed in the last ten years; has become unrecognizable. The jobs in today’s corporate setup and the skill requirements for future managers for these roles have changed. Hard skills like your technical knowledge and education are still important, of course, but these skills are the invaluable asset that will set you apart from the rest.
Developing the critical soft skills that are needed and will continue to be essential for success in the modern workplace is crucial now. These non-technical, non-educational skills will go a long way to whatever future success you desire. In the last decade or so, in the corporate world, it has become absolutely clear how important soft skills have become in staying relevant and achieving success in the changing workplace. Communication, the ability to work in a team to overcome difficulties, listen carefully and empathize with others – such characteristics have suddenly become as important as your qualifications and technical knowledge. Even in highly technical roles like IT, future professionals who have vast knowledge of their subjects will still have a hard time getting hired, unless they are also experts in supplemental soft skills.
In 2015, research by research group The Development Economics, UK, found that soft skills have enormous economic value, including preventing losses for any business that are caused by a lack of key soft skills in its employees. Such a lack causes an increase in operating costs, results in loss of business for competitors, causes problems in meeting quality standards, and causes delays in the introduction or innovation of new products and services. It is clear, then, that soft skills are not really ‘soft’ after all, and have become an ‘essential’ requirement for companies and their employees. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call them ‘power skills’ instead, cutting edge special tools that will set you apart from the competition.