Soft skills gap: 8 things new hires don’t know — and how to train for them

As new hires just out of school fill open positions, the soft skills gap widens.

And in HR, you’ve probably seen it.

What’s at issue? Managers across industries, company sizes and demographics often complain. The generation newest to the workforce:

• lacks people skills
• can’t communicate without looking at a device
• lacks critical thinking
• is unprofessional
• has no self-awareness
• don’t hold themselves accountable
• needs an attitude adjustment, and
• has no work ethic.

Real proof: 75% of of employers say they have a difficult time finding college graduates with the soft skills they need, a Cengage/Morning Consult survey found.

“We now have very hard evidence that you have to have soft skills in order to succeed,” says James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist.

But, “there’s evidence that soft skills can be learned and mastered,” Heckman says in his research. “As such, programs that enhance soft skills have an important place.”

Soft skills gap runs deeper

In some cases, it’s not limited to soft skills. Standardized employment assessment scores for job candidates with college degrees and under the age of 25 have steadily declined since 2019, according to data from Criteria Corp., which administers tests.

Managers in nearly every sector — from engineering and accounting to customer service and entertainment — complain that newly minted professionals lack a lot of hard skills they should’ve learned in their first years of post-secondary education. (Anecdotally, my husband says he’s had to teach his last two legal/accounting interns how to address envelopes!)

That gap might lead to longer onboarding and job-specific training — plus, the time and patience it’ll demand from trainers, managers and/or mentors. But their job skills should catch up eventually.

The soft skills are another story. With no experience, many new hires aren’t even aware of what they don’t know.

So here are critical areas you’ll want to provide guidance and/or actual training on — plus tips on how to teach each.

Real-time communication

One big gripe: The youngest generation don’t communicate comfortably or effectively face-to-face. Nearly 55% of employers say they have a difficult time finding candidates with strong communication skills.

“It’s understandable that young people are struggling with this. Communication is a skill we learn through repetition. If you’re not doing it, it’s pretty hard to get proficient at it,” says Eliza VanCort, author of A Woman’s Guide to Claiming Space: Stand Tall. Raise Your Voice. Be Heard. “Talking through the safety of a screen versus standing directly in front of a human being is just not the same.”

Bolstering their real-time, face-to-face communication skills might be a lesson in tough love. Try a no-device policy for some meetings. Or use some teambuilding activities for new hires that require no devices.

Another idea from VanCort: “Teaching acting can be one of the most powerful ways to do this, as acting is all about understanding human emotion … This type of training, or any kind of communication training that is hands-on and in-person, rather than something you get from a handout or a booklet, is an investment which will create invaluable long-term benefits.”

Critical thinking

Nearly two-thirds of the companies in the Cengage/Morning Consult study said they struggle to find candidates with critical thinking skills. Many recent grads can give the textbook version of anything, but they struggle to see or solve anything beyond the book and outside the box.

So they need some lessons in thinking differently. Here are three tactics:

• Speak to a kid: “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself,” Albert Einstein said. Ask new employees to break down an abstract, complex or just new-to-them concept into simple terms — and then talk it through to a (fictional) audience of six-year-olds. It should help them discover parts of the subject they don’t fully understand — and get them thinking about it in a new way.
• Expose them to new content and creators. Use discussion groups to encourage and direct newer employees to books, authors, forms of content and subjects way outside of the normal social media they consume.
• Work backward. Occasionally, ask employees to work backward on something so they might see things they’d otherwise overlook. For instance, proofread a document from end to beginning. Or dismantle something to put it together again — perhaps without instructions!

Self-awareness

“The two most critical soft skills are being able to name and identify the feelings of others — and in yourself,” says VanCort. “If you can’t do that, any other soft skill will be nearly impossible to learn.”

To help new employees increase self-awareness, include onboarding activities that help them identify their:

• personal strengths
• weaknesses
• goals
• emotions that impact their work
• emotions that impact how they interact with others
• situations that put them at ease, and
• situations that make them uncomfortable.

It’ll help to review these exercises a few times a year, as those answers will change — and they’ll want to be aware of that.

Initiative, productivity (aka work ethic)

So, we might think it’s difficult — if not impossible — to teach work ethic because we often believe work ethic is “instilled,” and that happened when employees were being raised.

But employees can adopt different work ethics when exposed to them.

This is where mentors for newer workers comes in. Ask veteran employees to set the bar and be a role model, explaining — without demeaning or bragging — the culture of your organization. They’ll want to talk about why people step in to help others when necessary, or working later when a project calls for it, giving examples. Then give the new employees assignments that let them practice those behaviors. Most importantly, reward them for going above and beyond.

Workplace etiquette

We won’t go into much detail on these issues here — other than to say that some people new to the workplace don’t yet know and understand workplace etiquette.

To help them, check out this story and this one on HRMorning, which delve deeply into today’s workplace etiquette.

Solution: Partner with local schools

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a pile of case studies, proving that partnerships with local high schools, community colleges and universities can lessen skills gaps — both hard and soft. In some cases, companies helped form curriculum to get the skills — and a pipeline of job candidates — they need. In other cases, the schools found out from local industry the skills gap and they built coursework to help students meet the need.

Either way, if new graduates lack the skills you need, consider reaching out to your local schools to create programs that will produce top-notch employees.