Satish and Aniket passed out from the same engineering college. Satish was the topper of his batch in computer science engineering while Aniket was a debate champion. In campus interviews, both were interviewed for a tech giant. Satish answered all the questions, but Aniket couldn’t answer even one. Aniket was discouraged. The list of selected candidates was published on the college notice board.
Today, Aniket is an entrepreneur and runs a 300-employee tech company. He has scaled his company from 20 to 300 in five years, raised funding, and tackled complex human resource and partner situations. His oratory has improved, and employees, including Satish, who is a software developer in his firm, listen to his town hall speech. Was Aniket valued more for his soft skills than the other?
Communication, delegation, and articulation of goals and objectives are soft skills. A leader without soft skills will see lower motivation and higher attrition with minimal or negligible manager-team member communication. Today, more companies are investing in people who are good speakers, listeners, have leadership qualities, time management, decision making and conflict resolution —some of the soft skills needed in a corporate world.
It has been estimated that over 50% of all employees will need re-skilling by 2025 as adoption of technology increases, according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report. Critical thinking and problem-solving top the list of skills employers believe will grow in prominence in the next five years. There will be focus on newly emerging skills in self-management such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility, states the report.
“The need for non-tech talent to humanise technology will become more acute as technology becomes ubiquitous. Non-tech job functions will embrace tech and evolve,” says Sarbojit Mallick, co-founder and chief business officer, Instahyre. In the report titled ‘State of Non-Tech talent 2022’ published by hiring platform Instahyre, when recruiters talk about the talent war, most of the time they refer to tech talent. But non-tech talent—HR, marketing, sales and operations —is what makes businesses successful.
Skilling the best
Indian talent needs continuous upskilling and reskilling in the short term to realign their careers. Since post-Covid, corporate spending on soft skills training increased in 2022, and with that, worker upskilling and productivity were considered the top issue in corporations.
A Career Outlook Report for January-June 2023 by learning solutions provider TeamLease EdTech says despite the global gloom, the intent to hire freshers for Indian employers has marginally increased by 3% (62%) compared to July-December 2022 (59%). Key findings suggest some of the top-rated soft skills include negotiation and persuasive skills, cognitive flexibility, curiosity/continual learning and emotional intelligence.
Neeti Sharma, president and co-founder, TeamLease Edtech, adds, “It’s interesting to see positive hiring sentiments for freshers amidst global turbulence and whispers of economic winter. As aspiring graduates and freshers, the key is to identify the industries that demonstrate an optimistic view and the job skills that would have good demand in the future.”
A survey of online learning platform Coursera shows skills-first credentials to be the centrepiece for hiring decisions in India. Up to 92% of employers in India feel a professional certification strengthens a candidate’s job application and 96% of students in India strongly agree that a professional certificate will help them land a job.
“Connecting skills-based learning and skills-based hiring can unlock opportunities for students while diversifying and expanding talent pipelines for employers”, says Raghav Gupta, MD, India and APAC, Coursera, adding, “Higher education institutions in India are enhancing their curricula by incorporating industry micro-credentials, boosting student recruitment and graduate employability. This industry-academia collaboration equips students with job-relevant skills and hands-on experience, giving them a head start as they enter the workforce.”
At the same time, skilling and the job market is relevant to climate change which is a fundamental factor to get right for good economic growth. Deloitte’s analysis shows that unchecked climate change, where global average temperatures rise by 3°C, slows growth in every region. By 2070, mounting global economic losses could total $178 trillion (in present-value terms), a future that would be marked by significant declines in productivity, job creation, standards of living, and well-being. In fact, in 2070 alone, global GDP could be 7.6% lower due to climate damages to growth. Deloitte’s modeling has shown that such a transformation could increase the size of the world economy by $43 trillion in net present-value terms by 2070.
Workplace abilities
As the most in-demand abilities were leadership and communication, with businesses emphasising training in these areas for all levels and functions of employees in remote working where time management, self-motivation, planning and execution skills, cooperation, and other professional effective abilities witnessed a significant increase in demand. In 2023, the trend will continue.
“Discussions on problem-solving, creativity, interpersonal communication, and teamwork will gain ground. We expect demand for asynchronous courses to grow substantially to let working professionals upskill and learn at their own pace,” adds Swapnil Kamat, CEO, upGrad Workbetter, an executive education and training company specialising in soft skills, sales and behaviour training.
According to an Instahyre report, the highest paying jobs are in online marketing, and marketing as a branch nets the highest salaries. For marketing talent with six years of experience, online marketing gets the highest average salary of ~`15 lakh per annum. In sales and customer service, people with the best soft skills—customer success and service, net the higher average salaries of `21 lakh (approximately).
The pandemic has also redefined what it means for businesses to have talent with equal amounts of soft skills as technical skills. The slowdown has made enterprises and startups look at an aggressive growth stage where hiring the right talent is critical.
Businesses have realised two imperatives to thrive in a volatile environment, as per Saumitra Chand, career expert at job search engine Indeed. He says, “The first is the need for digital innovation to stay ahead of the curve. Second is a talent pool with the right skill sets to lead the changes in a dynamic ecosystem. Skills like a growth mindset, critical thinking, creativity and autonomy have become the key determinants of aggressive organisational growth and success.”
New findings from Indeed showcase the job roles that saw the biggest growth and decline in 2022. The biggest decrease in jobs were seen in tech-led roles. Software engineering manager, application developer, and senior technical specialist are some of the job roles with the largest decrease in jobs. Sashi Kumar, head of sales, Indeed India, says, “In 2022, we saw a significant increase in non-tech roles, given the relative return to normalcy in various sectors and we expect them to be at the forefront in job recovery in 2023. We foresee the growth of gig roles with Indeed’s data showing that a 9-11 million strong gig workforce is in the making in the next three years.”
Companies like Sulekha, Zoho define the success of their business in terms of strong partnerships with clients and customers. Thus, the ability to connect with a diverse range of individuals is crucial and this relies not only on the product or service but also on interpersonal skills.
“We focus on a comprehensive range of soft skills training including language skills through platforms like Capshine, a burgeoning English people skills learning app and a repository of learning modules and live speaking practice sessions with experts,” says Satya Prabhakar, founder and CEO, Sulekha.com, digital platform for local service businesses in India.
With reducing attention spans, the art of persuasion takes on a whole new dimension. “We need to understand the people we want to pitch our ideas to, be conscious of their needs and take a bold stance on how we want to create products to better serve customers. The ability to understand and enunciate has become crucial now,” says Rajendran Dandapani, director of technology, Zoho Corporation and president, Zoho Schools of Learning.
For enterprise software and SaaS product company, Kovai.co works soft skills are key traits that business leaders look for in candidates. “Employees in customer-facing roles should be good at soft skills, and any mishap can impact the business,” says Andrew Cloke, chief operations officer, Kovai.co.
For example, in the SaaS industry, multiple departments like customer support, customer happiness, and sales demonstration representatives, approach or interact with customers from across the globe. They need to be good at interacting with customers when pitching a new idea, or sorting out an issue.