Soft skills are dead—long live “skills”

Here’s a little thought exercise: Suppose Harvard University, the Carnegie Foundation, and the Stanford Research Center all got together to find out what exactly made a person successful at work. Suppose they discovered that we had two complementary skill sets. One accounted for about 15% of one’s ability to succeed at work, and the other accounted for the remaining 85%. Which skill set would be deemed more important?

It may sound like an obvious question, but it’s not. Because the aforementioned research does exist, we still refer to the less impactful skill set with the attractive name “hard skills.” These include a person’s technical know-how and mastery of the tools and platforms of their trade. The other skill set, which actually matters more, is often called “soft skills”—sometimes somewhat derisively. Walk around tech conventions and you’ll frequently hear praise for someone’s coding skills, but rarely do people mention an employee’s communication abilities or emotional intelligence for teamwork.

And that’s not just a pity; it’s a problem. As long as we refer to the skills that overwhelmingly account for success as “soft,” we’re likely to get them wrong. Let’s finally move past the term “soft skills.” From now on, let’s just call them skills without any qualifiers.

What, then, are the key components to consider in evaluating a winning candidate? Five bits of insight come to mind.

1. Forget knowledge and look for experience

To understand this key point, consider two hostage negotiators. One is a star graduate from the police academy, a brilliant student who has mastered every manual and simulation. The other is not quite as clever but has 22 years of on-the-job experience. Who would you prefer in a high-stakes, real-life scenario?

The answer is clear. When the pressure is on, and every small decision has vast consequences, you’d want someone who has seen and done it all before, knows what to expect, and can handle the stress. As we’ve seen repeatedly in hiring top team members for complex tech projects, experience is a hard-to-beat asset.

2. Skip that degree; seek competence

I value education highly, but a college degree, even from a prestigious institution, only reflects mastery of a limited set of hard skills. In college, you’re taught how to do specific things, like coding in a particular language, and are graded on how well you perform them. What about the ability to pivot and change course? This requires adaptability, a big-picture mindset, and forward-thinking—qualities that aren’t measured by multiple-choice questions or A-F grading systems. As the conversation about integrating these metrics grows, I still see a lack of focus on evaluating qualities like being a good team player or having effective time management skills.

Many managers boast about hiring only college graduates, assuming that candidates without degrees lack skills and aren’t as worthy. This myopic vision is changing. The college-taught skills matter, but if you’re looking for a star candidate, worry less about that diploma and more about the ability to handle critical work, which often relies on interpersonal skills no university teaches.

3. Get cozy with key behaviors

The term may sound a bit unclear, but it couldn’t be more important. Why? Consider the difference between hard and soft skills. We have good ways of measuring the former, so why not develop reliable metrics for the latter? We see soft skills as intangible qualities and key behaviors serve as benchmarks to help managers determine competence in skills we used to call soft.

Can Sandra, as a project manager, leverage time management skills by creating a well-defined project plan, setting time limits, and establishing clear priorities? Can Harold, as a tech lead, positively impact software development by involving team members collaboratively in the decision-making process? These questions can sometimes be tricky to answer, but codifying and measuring these skills will help all make more informed and beneficial staffing decisions.

4. All hail logic and reasoning

Someone I know once came back stunned from a job interview. As a highly trained engineer, he expected to discuss his education and experience. Instead, the interviewer asked, “How many quarters would you need to stack to reach the top of the Empire State Building?” My friend was puzzled, wondering how anyone could know without measuring. But the interviewer knew exactly what they were doing.

He aimed to assess a key skill: logical thinking. Instead of a precise answer, he wanted to see a candidate approach the problem like this: “The Empire State Building is about a thousand feet tall. Ten quarters stack to about an inch, so that’s 120 quarters per foot. Therefore, it would take around 120,000 quarters.” The answer may not be correct, but the thought process proves that a person can break free from the rigid confines of a particular discipline and think in broad and flexible terms.

5. Master the unseen—soft skills can be developed

Often, when discussing soft skills with colleagues, I’ll hear something like, “Well, too bad you can’t teach how to be a great communicator or how to be a good team player.” I’ve some great news: You can. Sure, some of us may have a natural advantage, but we now have concrete research proving that soft skills can be developed and even mastered.

There is a catch: Unlike hard skills, which engineers often learn quickly and on their own, soft skills are situation-dependent and can’t be mastered through training software or instruction manuals alone. Employers need to prioritize soft skill training, modeling the interactions employees are likely to encounter and guiding them through key moments. We have been doing this at my company, BairesDev by giving employees a platform for them to practice, discuss, and consolidate their abilities in communication, teamwork, critical thinking, and proactivity in different project-based settings. Do that and you’ll see a rapid improvement, to the benefit of everyone involved.

So let’s speak about “soft skills” no more, and instead get busy doubling down on what really makes someone succeed in the increasingly demanding, ever-evolving, and complex workplace reality.

Nacho De Marco is the cofounder and CEO of BairesDev.