‘Soft’ skills are again sought by employers

GOOD MANNERS: Daniel Titus, left, assistant director of Salve Regina’s computer labs who served as an etiquette coach, and senior Sebastian Berrazueta, at the school’s 2012 Etiquette Dinner.

Photo Credit 1 = PHOTO COURTESY SALVE REGINA/ANDREA HANSEN
GOOD MANNERS: Daniel Titus, left, assistant director of Salve Regina’s computer labs who served as an etiquette coach, and senior Sebastian Berrazueta, at the school’s 2012 Etiquette Dinner. Photo Credit 1 = PHOTO COURTESY SALVE REGINA/ANDREA HANSEN

What do you do if your cellphone rings while at a business dinner?
The answer should be simple, but that’s not always the case in today’s working world, in which local employers increasingly are pointing to a lack of so-called “soft” skills as contributing to a gap that they, educators and workforce-development leaders say is plaguing the Rhode Island job market.
“The answer to that is it should never ring because it should be turned off,” said Robbin Beauchamp, director of the career center at Roger Williams University. “Dining etiquette isn’t [all] about the food.”
Roger Williams, like several other higher educational institutions in the state, including Salve Regina University and Providence College, has through its career center organized a dining-etiquette program for students meant to focus on developing and practicing conversational and professional skills that are part of what most agree are the soft – or nontechnical – skill set.
The fact that these abilities are desired by employers is evident in numerous surveys and reports.
In an August 2012 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management to validate previous employer surveys in Rhode Island, according to the R.I. Governor’s Workforce Board, 52 percent of 50 responding firms said their job candidates need work-readiness skills and 28 percent said there was a need for communication skills.
In its 2013 Job Outlook Survey, the National Association of Colleges and Employers reported that in ranking candidates’ skills and qualities, technical knowledge came in seventh, while the ability to verbally communicate was first, followed by the ability to work in a team structure, to make decisions and solve problems, and to plan, organize and prioritize work.
The Graduate Management Admission Council, a nonprofit organization of graduate management schools, reported in its 2012 Corporate Recruiters Survey that among qualities recruiters look for in graduate job applicants are leadership (51 percent), goal orientation (46 percent), motivation (36 percent), professionalism (36 percent), and innovation (35 percent). That survey also cites listening ability, persuasiveness and tact as desirable qualities.
“The term [soft skills] … I actually have never been crazy about because it implies less value than hard or technical skills,” said Andy Simmons, director of the career lab at Brown University.
Simmons and other career-readiness advisers agree that putting a definitive description next to the term “soft skills” is difficult, because employers often define it differently.
Where Simmons places an emphasis on communication, social and persuasion skills, Myra Edelstein, associate professor and chairman of business studies and economics at Salve Regina, defines the skill set as how an employee carries themselves and a general sense of good etiquette.
Patricia Goff, director of the career-education center at Providence College, includes enthusiasm and emotional intelligence among the set.
Neil Steinberg, president and CEO of The Rhode Island Foundation, which earlier this fall ran Make it Happen RI, a workshop focusing on how to improve the state’s economy through business and workforce development, said there isn’t a right or wrong answer on what constitutes a “soft” skill.
Though those skills always have been needed to succeed professionally, Steinberg said, they haven’t, for various reasons, been ingrained in today’s youngest workers in secondary schooling or at home the way they might previously have been.
That, he said, could have something to do with long-gone teenage habits of previous generations.
“Things like paper routes and minimum-wage, fast-food jobs teach a lot of people about soft skills and dealing with customers. I think it goes back to [learning] at school and at home,” Steinberg said.
Beauchamp has seen the same qualities pop up on employers’ wish lists year after year.
“I don’t think it’s news. The top 10 [qualities] are always the same,” she said. “But to me, communications I think [has] gotten troubling for employers, and I personally attribute that to text messages. [Even] email has gotten very loose.” Beauchamp said Roger Williams’ etiquette dinner has sold out the last couple years, bringing in between 70 and 100 students from all undergraduate classes.
The annual etiquette dinner at Salve Regina, open to seniors, accommodates about 100 students who are critiqued throughout the evening by etiquette coaches comprised of university faculty and staff, community business professionals and alumni.
“We talk about how to introduce yourself, including putting your name tag on the right shoulder so that when you extend your hand to shake, people’s eyes go right to that shoulder,” Edelstein said. “It’s formal, but I think the students really have a lot of fun with it. With students about to embark [into the real world] who don’t have a lot of work experience, they certainly can benefit from [this].”
Simmons said Brown has “hundreds” of soft-skill developing events throughout the year, including an etiquette lunch, job-hunting workshops, networking training and a Career Laboratory each January at which alumni from various career fields help conduct speed networking and elevator pitches, among other exercises.
“By the end of the weekend, students have a much better idea of what this networking … which is also a difficult thing to define, is all about,” Simmons said.
Providence College’s annual etiquette dinner each spring draws more than 100 students, according to Goff. The college also has employers in its career center every Friday afternoon to practice interviewing skills with students, annual nights for networking and shadowing programs with alumni which, Goff said, allow students to practice networking in a “low-pressure environment.”
“I hear from employers that this is a problem in general. It’s a wonderful question, nature versus nurture,” she said. “Some students come up through the ranks and possess and use these skills and it’s wonderful. There are others who use them once they’ve been molded and educated.” •

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