Why being "soft" is desirable in the workplace
Written by Siti Fatimah Ayuningdyah | Read in Indonesian
“The main challenge graduates face is accessing opportunities to develop key ‘soft skills’ such as leadership, confidence and resilience. There is also a lack of awareness about the need to develop these skills. This means students graduate without a level of employability and are thus underemployed or unable to secure roles,” shared Henry Aspinall, the Head of Partnerships of Work Ready as quoted in QS Intelligence Unit’s “The Global Skills Gap in the 21st Century” report.
Shocking? Not exactly. Soft skills among fresh graduates – or the lack thereof – have become a recurring topic in the past few years.
In fact, the development of soft skills is a serious enough matter that even Indonesia’s Minister of Education, Culture, Research and Technology Nadiem Makarim has introduced a number of notable project-based initiatives to hone these skills.
But first, let us define what is considered a “soft” skill. Soft skills are ”character traits and interpersonal skills that characterize a person's relationships with other people”. In the workplace, soft skills are considered a complement to hard skills, which refer to a person's knowledge and occupational skills. For example, if you were a doctor, your hard skills would include your medical knowledge, skills and experience.
Whereas your soft skills would include empathy and communication skills in delivering medical information to patients. It is not a matter of one being more important than the other, but about complementing one another.
School, university and various certification courses have equipped graduates with the necessary hard skills. However, the development of soft skills has not always been prioritised, resulting in the discrepancy between expectation and reality in the workplace for fresh graduates as mentioned in the first part of this article series.
In the report by QS Intelligence Unit, two factors are used to identify deficiencies in skills: importance and satisfaction. The importance factor is a measure of how many employers see a skill as important or very important, whereas the satisfaction factor is a measure of how many employers are satisfied with the particular skill in their graduate hires.
It turns out, hard skills such as commercial awareness, subject knowledge and technical skills are three skills with the smallest gaps between expectation the importance. Skills with the biggest gaps? Problem-solving, resilience and leadership – all soft skills.
TFR talked with a human resources practitioner from a global consulting firm about the soft skills companies are looking for, and his answer was: “analytical thinking, creativity, leadership, adaptability to feedback and communication skills”. He singled out adaptability to feedback as an underrated skill that many companies actually value.
A challenge he noted when dealing with fresh graduates is that they “are very strong in theory, but keep on facing challenges in implementation. And they typically have the urge to move fast without strengthening the foundation”.
Clearly, something needs to be done to close the gaps. One of the solutions that have proven to be effective is internship. In the longer term, internship programmes can help close graduate skills gaps prior to graduate hiring.
Employers have reported that 63% of the former interns they recruit have the soft skills they expect, compared to just 48% of graduates in general.
In fact, 70% of employers who compare former interns with other graduates stated that interns outperform their peers in at least one aspect. Hence, providing more internship opportunities is a step in the right direction. If industries start accepting more interns, in the long run industries will encounter more well-rounded graduate hires as well.
University students understand this. TFR conducted a survey to college students to learn more about their attitude and experience with regards to pre-graduate employment.
90.6% of the respondents have had pre-graduate employment in some form, whether as interns, full-timers, or part-timers. 90.6% of them reported that they gained new skills through their working experience, and listed negotiation skills and adaptability as the top two skills they specifically learned through working.
“I also experienced culture shock. I know how a company runs their system and how they solve their problem theoretically. However, I learned that the problem is unpredictable and it comes along the way. In fact, I still remember how hard it was for me to encourage myself to keep going on the second day. It just feels like another environment for me and so far away from my comfort zone. Somehow it triggers my fear. Thus, the experience is really needed. Like the quote, experience is the best teacher,” a respondent shared.
Image: Sampoerna University
Universities and other educational institutions can also help close the gap by creating an environment that prepares their students for the workplace through teaching style and school programmes. TFR interviewed Tombak Matahari, Head of Study Program Visual Communication Design (New Media) of Sampoerna University, and he argued that the skillsets of the educators matter as well.
“The main challenge of teaching university students these days is that students these days are so advanced,” he told TFR. For example, back in his own university days decades ago, learning how to operate a proper camera was a “luxury”, whereas university students these days have gotten familiar with camera equipment and video-making at much earlier ages, with much easier access to learning materials due to technology. “That’s what makes it challenging, what should I teach as a lecturer if they already know so much?” he added.
That is why, Tombak said, it is essential for lecturers – in Sampoerna University in particular – to have relevant professional experience, not only technical knowledge. Other initiatives Sampoerna University have developed include the Bright Future Festival, a festival aimed to prepare students for their future careers with activities such as webinar, job fair and CV review. They also hosted mock interviews to help future graduates with their soft skills in communicating with potential employers.
Sampoerna University also regularly holds seminars and talk shows featuring industry leaders from various companies. These events are some of their tools to develop students’ soft skills, including confidence, leadership and workforce know-how. Students are required to complete an internship programme to graduate, which the university finds essential for soft and hard skills development.
Sampoerna University has forged partnerships with more than 40 companies, including Danone, Astra, Pertamina and Deloitte, to provide students with the chance to “taste” real workforce through internship programmes.
Beyond developing their students’ soft skills, Sampoerna University also actively holds various programmes that are accessible to the public, including high school students. BFF and Summer Bootcamp are two of such programmes. Summer Bootcamp is a 5-day programme for high school students to learn from industry experts in an interactive way, to hone their soft skills even more. More information can be found here.
In the end, there is no one size fits all solution to prepare future graduates with the necessary soft skills. One thing is for sure, soft skills development has to start becoming a priority, for educational institutions, future graduates and future employers.
The good news? We have now acknowledged soft skills as important and valuable, and things can only look up from there.