Soft skills are anything but soft. In today’s remote-friendly, DE&I-conscious, intergenerational workplace, the skills associated with high emotional intelligence—empathy, active listening, conflict resolution—are increasingly valued by employers.

But soft skills are harder to test for than, say, proficiency in a programming language.

“Soft skills are less binary [and] also more contextualized,” said Deborah Everhart, chief strategy officer at Credential Engine, a nonprofit that aims to make the wide range of microcredentials—such as certificates earned from boot camps or online courses—more transparent to workers and employers.

Many HR teams have started adopting a skills-based approach to talent strategy. In doing so, they’ve realized a keen need to hire for soft skills. But the standard interview process does not always allow employers to identify and assess candidates’ soft skills. As a result, they’re considering new hiring processes.

Defining these skills. Naomi Boyer, executive director of digital transformation at the Education Design Lab (EDL), works with educators and business leaders, including many in HR, to develop frameworks for assessing the skills they’re looking for in prospective students and employees. Her preferred term for soft skills is “21st century skills.”

“Employers often say we can train the technical, [but] we can’t train the 21st century skills. We need people to be coming in with the skills, and they’re not showing up job-ready,” she told HR Brew. “Everyone’s trying to figure out the best way to do this.”

EDL’s research-backed framework tests (sometimes using extended or virtual reality) for soft skills across nine competencies—including empathy, resilience, and creative problem-solving—each with four sub-competencies, such as active listening and self-awareness.

It is also working on ways to use existing data—such as a worker’s ratings on a freelancer platform—to determine the strength of their soft skills. Keep reading here.—AK

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @AmanfromCT on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Aman for his number on Signal.

Laura Mazzullo is a seasoned recruiting professional who has worked in the field for nearly 20 years. Since founding her recruiting firm, East Side Staffing, in 2013, she has been solely focused on staffing for the HR world, but training and developing internal recruiters is also part of her wheelhouse. “There are a lot of hiring managers who don’t know how to hire as well as they could, and there are a lot of internal recruiters who are never given opportunities for their own growth,” Mazzullo said. She shared with HR Brew how she trains and supports hiring managers.

How would you describe your specific job to someone who doesn’t work in HR?

I help companies learn how to hire better, and help organizations hire HR talent.

What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you've worked?

I worked for a search firm that had 11-hour working days with zero work–life balance and [I] made a change ensuring people left at reasonable hours for whatever they wanted to do outside of the office! The old way of working made zero sense for the modern world.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job?

That it's just finding résumés. Hiring is really complex, so it’s not just finding the person for the job. That’s one part of hiring. But there’s also the part of coaching the hiring manager through the journey and making sure they’re overcoming their biases, that they’re trained on candidate experience and candidate care, that the interview has been fleshed out…There’s a more thorough strategy to hiring than just, “I’m going to go search for the candidate.”

What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job? Keep reading here.

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @adamderose on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Adam for his number on Signal.

It could be another sad holiday season for your party pants.

While more companies are throwing down at the end of 2022 than they did to close out 2020 or 2021, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a consultancy that has tracked corporate holiday party trends since 2004, reminds us that’s a very low bar. Just 56.9% of companies surveyed by the firm reported plans to host an in-person holiday gathering this year, the lowest percentage since 2009 (Covid years aside), according to a Challenger study shared with HR Brew via VP of PR Colleen Madden.

Not since the recession. Many of Corporate America’s leaders weren’t in a celebratory spirit in 2009, as they grappled with the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Consulting firm Battalia Winston reported a decline in office parties in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Some 55% of US employers who reported not having a party in 2010 told the firm they thought such events were inappropriate for the economic times.

Is this recession-related, too? Maybe. Businesses in the hard-hit tech sector, which has laid off almost 143,000 workers so far this year, report being the least likely to host a gathering. Of the tech companies who told Challenger they will not have a party in 2022, 17% cited economic conditions as the driving factor. Many employers that will celebrate, including Meta and Google, will have more low-key events than in past years, Protocol reported.

But in other industries, particularly those still grappling with high resignation rates, hosting a holiday party could be part of HR’s talent strategy.

WYD? We asked HR Brew readers whether the economy has influenced their party plans. Some 36% of respondents said they are skipping or majorly downsizing holiday parties to save money, and 33% have never hosted in-person holiday parties to begin with. But 31% are planning celebrations to remember. Keep reading here.—SV

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SusannaVogel1 on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Susanna for her number on Signal.

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: Hiring in the US fell 4.9% between October and November. (LinkedIn)

Quote: “This is how you can get your company connected again.”—Greg Kwiat, the co-owner of a diamond business, on using virtual-office software to bring his employees together (Bloomberg)

Read: Elon Musk’s first month as Twitter CEO was a crash-course in chaos. (Vox)

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