Picking Up ‘Soft Skills' Can Be A Hard Lesson
For most of the year, Halloween Costume World and Haunted Mansion in Fitchburg has between two and four employees. In September and October, that number jumps to as high as 40.
Owner Jack Hoover said he never has to advertise the jobs; people just show up looking for them. But despite streams of applicants coming through the doors, Hoover said many of the workers he hires simply don’t seem to have what it takes to do the job.
“There’s a number of them that work one day and I say ‘I’m sorry, it’s just not going to work out,’ because their work skills are just crap,” Hoover said.
The problem employees don’t listen, or work steadily through their shifts, Hoover said. “You look for them, you can’t find them.”
It can be hard to gauge from job applicants’ resumes whether they’ll show up on time, communicate well and take on tasks with a positive attitude. But those soft skills are some of the most important qualifications for many jobs. A survey published last year by the staffing firm Office Team found that, when it comes to filling administrative support positions, 73 percent of managers wouldn’t hire candidates whose interpersonal skills are weak even if they had strong technical skills. In contrast, 67 percent would hire candidates who lack sufficient technical skills but are good at dealing with other people.
The phrase “soft skills” raises a few questions. Are these kinds of qualities skills? Or are they part of a person’s personality? Does the answer to shoring up someone’s soft skills lie in training or motivation? Can things like a strong work ethic be taught?
No Easy Answers
The staff at the state Workforce Central Career Center in Worcester, who are charged with giving job seekers the tools to get and keep new jobs, say the answers to these questions are complicated. For the most part, they say, soft skills can be learned, but the process isn’t as simple as a 15-minute training session about the importance of punctuality.
Steve Freedman works with a category of job seekers who have a particularly hard time finding work: ex-criminals trying to reenter the workforce. Freedman says these men and women face a number of barriers to employment: employer resistance to hiring people who have committed crimes, resume gaps, and sometimes underlying personal problems. They also often have problems staying on task in the workplace.
Freedman attributes that to a failure to identify a purpose and vision.
“There’s no focus,” he said. “So they’re all over the place.”
Volunteering Can Help
Freedman says something as broad as a personal vision can’t be taught in a classroom, but it can be learned. He said one of the best tools for the people he works with is volunteering. Working for a nonprofit can develop job seekers’ work skills and earn them good letters of recommendation, and it can change the way they think.
“My experience has been that people’s self-esteem starts rising,” he said.
Roy Lucas works with another population that has a particularly hard time in the job market: people between the ages of 16 and 24. Lucas said that soft skills, in many cases, may be a matter of culture. He said some employers may misinterpret the way some young people dress or talk as being disrespectful or unfocused.
“It’s … the obligation of the youth to present him or herself in a way that lends for the employer to be comfortable,” he said.
Lucas said he likes to approach young people not by telling them that office- appropriate clothes and habits are better than the way they dress and act with their friends, but by helping them see what employers are looking for and encouraging them to learn to move comfortably between the different settings.
Important In Factories Too
Like many small manufacturing companies, First Plastics Corp. in Leominster employs the vast majority of its workers through a temp agency. Office Manager Lisa Butler said that’s mainly because the company’s labor needs vary, depending on how busy it is. But if an employee doesn’t work out — and she says about 5 percent of them don’t — using an agency also makes it easy to bring in someone new.
Butler said that, even for factory-floor jobs, soft skills are important.
“We want people in here that are willing to work, that are willing to get along with people and even make suggestions,” she said. “We like to have people that are reliable and willing to work with other people, willing to work on whatever they’re given.”
Networking Provides An Edge
Robert DePetro, who works at the career center with a more typical population of laid-off workers, said he also sees plenty of people who lack soft skills. Sometimes, he said, a job search can, in itself, be a course in interpersonal skills. Networking is often the key to finding a new job, and people who learn to do that well can often thrive in many work environments.
“For many people, unless they have a really extroverted personality, it pushes them out of their comfort zone,” he said. “But it’s necessary, so they find the inner strength.”
Particularly with many people now out of work for months and even years, he said, being unemployed can be transformative.
“At the end of a long-term successful search, many individuals really are almost a different person,” he said.
Ann Nguyen Antunes, who works with both job seekers and employers at Workforce Central, said she sees a range of ability when it comes to things like getting to work on time. Sometimes, she said, it just boils down to motivation.
“When you talk to them, you will know the ones that want to work and the ones that don’t want to work,” she said.
Then again, she said, some employers are unwilling to listen to even legitimate excuses for any lateness.
“Some just basically draw the line and they do not tolerate any,” she said. “I find that a bit overboard.”
She said companies will actually fire people for small violations because they need to reduce their workforces and don’t want the extra unemployment insurance expense that comes with layoffs.
Freedman said another thing that can make it hard for workers to be at their best is a sense that they’re in dead-end jobs.
“They’re in a place that doesn’t line up with their values, their motivation,” he said. “In order for retention to happen for most people, it has to include your interests, your values.”
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Building Employees’ Soft Skills
Most employers expect workers to be punctual, on-task and professional without having to be told. But there are some things companies and managers can do to encourage workers to develop and practice those soft skills. Here are five, based on ideas from the Workforce Central Career Center in Worcester:
- Separate what employees wear from how they behave. Try to separate aspects of employees’ clothing and behavior that affect their job performance from an automatic preference for people who look and act in ways you’re used to. Some of the best telemarketers may have lots of piercings and tattoos.
- Don’t go overboard with rule enforcement. Most employees occasionally have emergency situations that cause them to show up late or be absent. A zero-tolerance policy can mean getting rid of good workers.
- Try to read between the lines on resumes. While the Career Center tries to teach applicants how to make their resumes stand out, not everyone applying for a job is great at written communication. Some great machine operators get passed over because their resumes don’t call enough attention to their skills.
- Use the skills you want to see employees practice. Managers and small business owners set the tone when it comes to teamwork, punctuality and positive attitude.
- Demonstrate that there’s a path for advancement from a low-wage job. Almost no one can stay motivated if they expect they’ll have to do the same thing for $10 an hour for the next 20 years.
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