With the same diploma, it is your soft skills that will make the difference for your employer!

Are the qualities for tomorrow's jobs so different from those of today?

Openness vs. certainty, intelligence quotient vs. emotional quotient, agility vs. hierarchy - what should you focus on to guarantee your employability?

Interview of Christophe Andreae

What kind of profiles are companies looking for today?

Apart from job-specific characteristics, recruiters are interested in the candidate's digital culture, his or her relational skills and everything that could develop the creation of value for the company.

Almost three forths of jobs are related to customer services, for which employees are expected to be ready to learn because the core business components will change in the future.

Above all, a human, intellectual agility will be prioritized.

It is therefore a question of creating the best recipe with the ingredients of knowledge, know-how and soft skills, while projecting oneself into an unknown future.

Universities have focused on teaching hard skills.

Universities have focused on teaching hard skills. Have they made a mistake regarding the employability of students?

Technical skills are essential. They are a base on which soft skills will make the final difference between two candidates with the same degree.

One can always acquire additional knowledge, if necessary, but skills such as listening, empathy or intellectual agility cannot be learned by attending a professional seminar lasting a few days.

Even in a highly technical environment, these "human" skills will reinforce one’s ability to adapt to technological complexity and future changes.

For many years, the focus has been on reasoning and mathematical skills rather than on the personality of our employees.

The left brain has often been presented as being associated with logical and rational reasoning, while the right brain is more intuitive and emotional. There would be "left-brain" or "right-brain" personalities, who would use one side of the brain more than the other. For instance, artists being more inclined to creation would use their right brain more! However, this is not based on proven scientific knowledge: we do use our two cerebral hemispheres, regardless of our personality.

Will recruiters abandon the reading of CVs for psychological tests?

Application processing is increasingly made by artificial intelligence algorithms which automatically select the most "compliant" profiles in terms of job skills. What will be sought are "human" skills and above-average ability to adapt to change.

Recruiting and training employees are time and energy consuming activities and companies do not want to lose these people.

What a person knows today is valid for 5 to 7 years, so people have to be interested in the world surrounding them instead of their immediate professional environment, and be ready for change.

Soft skills, agility, emotional quotient vs intellectual quotient

Soft skills, agility, emotional quotient vs intellectual quotient… What are the new skills to guarantee employability?

Above all, it is the ability to adapt and to constantly question oneself in order to find the right solutions that will make the difference. What is right today can be wrong tomorrow. We need to bring together agility, intellectual and emotional skills, and move from certainty to openness. Tomorrow's jobs do not exist yet and we must open ourselves up to permanent training in order to fight against the obsolescence of our technical skills. This obsolescence does not exist in our human skills and it is reinforced even with age and experience.

Learning techniques are also changing: programs such as École 42, gestures that are too precise can be replaced by robots, artificial intelligence… It is therefore our HUMAN skills that will make the difference.

The new generations have a fundamentally different approach to work than their elders

It is said that the new generations have a fundamentally different approach to work than their elders. Do you see this?

The new entrants to the labor market have different expectations: the quest for meaning is stronger. They are looking for more than just a salary. 

Moving up the hierarchy, putting work at the center of their concerns is no longer a goal. 

They place quality of life, personal time, 80% part-time work, also sought after by men, to be a father or to pursue a passion as a key factor of personal fulfillment. This phenomenon has been accelerated by telecommuting and the return to the office full time is no longer desired. Two days a week seems to be the best way to meet the aspirations of this age group and to achieve a better work/life balance and more flexible working hours, finishing at 5pm or 8pm, depending on what they want to do during the day. 

Companies will have to respond to this new situation if they want to attract and retain the profiles of these younger generations, who are more aware, more egalitarian, and who have more confidence to apply for management positions regardless of their gender, even on a part-time basis. They do not wait for an automatic promotion.

Nevertheless, the job market is affected by "youthism" and people over 50-60 years old have more difficulties to reposition themselves, despite soft skills which are more essential than technical ones! Here the network remains a major asset.

A professional world that is more co-creative and diversified is indeed the solution of the future in terms of employability!

Interview by Nadine Reichenthal