THE IMPORTANCE

OF SOFT SKILLS
IN THE JOB MARKET

An analysis of the soft skills

demand by job, function
and seniority level
Contents

0. Executive Summary 03

1. Introduction 04

2. Context 06

2.1. The origin of soft skills 06

2.2. The rise of soft skills 06
2.3. Soft skills in today's job market 07

3. Study 08

3.1. Data 08
3.2. Methods 09

4. Results 10

4.1. Job diversity 10

4.2. How many soft skills are typically required for a job? 10
4.3. Which soft skills are most (and least) requested by recruiters? 10
4.4. Which soft skills are required for the jobs most commonly present 12
in companies?
4.5. What is the link between soft skills and the most common corporate 14
functions?
4.6 Do the soft skills required depend on the seniority level of the 16
position?

5. Conclusion 18

6. References 19

7. Appendices 21
 03

E xec u t i ve su m m a r y
The recruitment market is gradually shifting its focus from
requiring knowledges to requiring skills.

Soft skills, in particular, have become crucial for employers when it comes
to assessing which candidates will best fit within a given team or within the
larger company setting. The present study examines the link between soft
skills and recruitment; its aim is two-fold:

(1) First, we sought to define a compact set of soft skills based on the most
frequent job requirements put forward by employers.

(2) Second, we aimed to identify the main soft skills required for a given job.

For the first point, we have identified a set of 38 soft skills which are most
frequently encountered in job postings. With this in hand, we proceeded to
analyze 850,000 job postings, keeping track of which soft skills are required
for which job.

Our results confirm that soft skills are indeed essential to recruitment:
nearly 90% of job postings require soft skills. On average, a job posting
requires 4 soft skills, while 10% of the job postings require 10 soft skills or
more.

Based on the patterns observed in the job posting data, we find that there
is a core of eight fundamental soft skills which are essential to most jobs.
These are communication (written and oral), time management, decision-
making and judgment, team spirit, adaptability, analytical skills and
autonomy.

Beyond these fundamental soft skills, there are other, specific, soft skills
which tend to be required in different jobs and functions. For example, for
the Sales function, two of the most sought-after soft skills are “ambition”
and “handling conflicts”.

The number of soft skills required varies with the job function
corresponding to the position recruited for: as an example, the Human
Resources function requires the greatest number of soft skills (25) among all
corporate functions.

We also find that the soft skills required depend on the seniority of the
position. As an example, senior management positions require more
autonomy, initiative, people management, self-confidence, and strategic
thinking.

In summary, this research presents a methodology for analyzing soft skills

in recruitment. These results can help human resources professionals to
optimize the content of their job advertisements and candidates to select
and apply for the offers that best match their profile.

This study is a continuation of our investigation of the connection between

jobs, skills and employment [1, 2].
 04

1.Introduction
« Soft skills predict success in life… they causally produce that success. »
This is the conclusion drawn by James J. Heckman (Nobel Prize winner in economics and
expert in the economics of human development) and his collaborators based on research
on the importance of personality in economic and social life [3]. Indeed, in recent years,
soft skills have been attracting increasing attention – whether in the field of recruitment,
general management, career development, and virtually any other aspect of
professional life.

For the sake of clarity, the notion of soft skills can be understood by considering its sub-
terms:

" Skill " : refers to a person's ability to perform certain tasks or the knowledge required to
perform those tasks.

" Soft " : designation illustrates the non-technical nature (as opposed to the “hard”
qualifier commonly employed for technical skills).

Soft skills have the following characteristics:

→ They include interpersonal qualities and personal attributes,

→ They are rather transversal [4] and are generally not job-specific,

→ They are traditionally not formally taught in the standard education curricula [5].

Table 1 below shows some examples of soft skills:

Personal skills Interpersonal skills

Autonomy Managing feedback

Adaptability Negotiation
Attention to detail Networking

Table 1. Examples of soft skills - personal and interpersonal.

Among the various international organizations which monitor the evolution of skills, the
World Economic Forum has undertaken some of the most comprehensive research on
soft skills to date. In particular, its studies have revealed that by 2022, the most sought-
after soft skills are expected to be: analytical thinking and innovation, active learning
and learning strategies, and creativity, originality and initiative [6].
 05

In this research, we examined soft skills from the

perspective of recruiters.

More specifically, by analyzing 850,000 job postings, we

sought to answer the following questions:

→ How many soft skills does a job typically require?

→ Which soft skills are most (and least) requested by

recruiters?

→ Which soft skills are required for the jobs most commonly
present in companies?

→ What is the link between soft skills and the most common
corporate functions?

→ Do the soft skills required depend on the seniority level of

the position?
 06

2.Context
2.1. The origin of soft skills
The origins of soft skills trace back to the US Army, who, in
the 1960s and 1970s was the first to identify and develop
the concept of soft skills.

In 1968, the US Continental Army Command (CONARC) officially introduced

its “Systems Engineering of Training” concerning “job-related skills involving
actions affecting primarily people and paper” [7].

The term “soft skills” appeared for the first time in a 1972 army training
manual [8]. That same year, a CONARC conference on soft skills was held.
Speaking at this conference, Dr. Paul Whitmore, defined soft skills as
“important job-related skills that involve little or no interaction with
machines and whose application on the job is quite generalized”[9].

The notion of “soft skills” was gradually adopted thereafter beyond the
realm of the military and today is widespread in society. Today, 50 years
after they were identified, soft skills are very much a “hot topic” in almost
every walk of life. The question begs itself: why have soft skills become so
important?

2.2. The rise of soft skills

Until very recently, career success in a given position

appeared to be based solely on the technical ability to
perform certain tasks.

As a result, recruiters and companies systematically placed technical skills

at the heart of the candidate search and evaluation process.

However, the workplace has considerably evolved since the 1970s. For one,
companies have experienced an acceleration in the pace of economic and
technological changes.

Their effects have been significant in several ways [10], not in the least in
regards to the skills sought by organizations.

While technical skills are important, especially digital literacy, they are no
longer sufficient. Soft skills are seen as the key for people and organization
to adapt and stay relevant in today’s fast-changing landscape.

We list below the main drivers of change experienced in the workplace,

along with the importance of soft skills to each:
 07

1. The type of work performed by people is changing:

With constant technological progress, the type of work performed by people is continually
changing as technologies evolve and machines take on an increasing number of human
tasks [11]. Recruiters are therefore increasingly looking for candidates with the adaptability
and the learning mindset required to keep up with these changes.

2. The work becomes increasingly collaborative:

The evolution towards a tertiary economy has given rise to new, more collaborative
professions. “Work in knowledge-based economies is increasingly accomplished by teams of
people with complementary expertise and roles, as opposed to individuals doing isolated
work in an industrial setting” [11][12]. Recruiters are therefore more and more looking for
candidates with strong interpersonal skills and the ability to work in teams.

3. Careers paths become increasingly fragmented:

Workers today are significantly more likely to change career fields or jobs than they were in
the past, and one-company careers are becoming extinct. The advent of digital removed the
barriers of entry in many industries, and small and medium-sized companies have
flourished, creating numerous jobs in the process. Faced with this evolution, recruiters are
looking for flexible and adaptable candidates who can move with ease between successive
roles, functions, or companies [10].

2.3. Soft skills in today's job market

As previously mentioned, soft skills are a major

differentiating factor for employability and professional
success today.

This is true for almost all fields, regardless of the sector. To illustrate this trend,
recent research has highlighted the importance of soft skills in many areas [13]
such as analytics and operations research/management science (OR/MS) [14],
accounting [15], information systems (IS) [16], finance [17], project management
[18] or leadership [19].

Among the most pervasive areas is project management, which itself was
shown to be highly dependent of soft skills. A qualitative study of project
management professionals by Azim et al. (2010) highlighted the fact that the key
to managing complex projects lies in soft skills: “75% of participants surveyed
stated that interpersonal skills are the most important factor in managing
project complexity.” [13][20].

To conclude, economic and technological changes have generated new skill

needs for individuals and organizations. While technical skills continue to be
important, they are no longer sufficient, and differentiation between candidates
relies increasingly on soft skills. Looking to the future, this trend can only continue
as automation is expected to displace most of the technical tasks carried by
people [1].
 08

3.Study
In order to quantify the link between soft skills and recruitment we
analyzed a large dataset of job postings. Specifically, we sought to
extract the soft skill requirements provided by recruiters and identify
the specific soft skill needs related to different jobs, functions and
seniority levels.

3.1. Data
To conduct this study, we used a database of 850,000 job postings [21]. The structure of
the data is detailed in Appendix 1.

To understand the nature of the jobs, we used a proprietary data set (“Boostrs
database”) that combines several major repositories such as ESCO [22], O*NET [23],
ISCO [24], ROME [25] and others. Each job is standardized and accompanied by a certain
number of alternative titles that allow it to be more readily identified.

Concerning soft skills, we have considered the personal and interpersonal skills listed in
the aforementioned repositories, as well as those considered in the research by Calanca
et al [26].

Using this approach, we established a list of 38 soft skills (Table 2 below), of which 24 are
personal skills, and the other 14 are interpersonal skills. Standard definitions for these 38
soft skills are provided in Appendices 2 and 3.

Personal skills

Ability to work under pressure Hardworkingness

Adaptability Initiative
Ambition Learning skills
Analytical skills Memory skills
Attention to detail Multitasking
Autonomy Positive mindset
Creativity and innovation Patience
Critical mindset Perseverance
Decision-making and judgement Rigor
Dedication Self-confidence
Drive for results Strategic thinking
Ethical behavior Time management
 09

Interpersonal skills

Active listening Negotiation skills

Building rapport with someone Networking
Client orientation Oral communication
Emotional intelligence People management
Handling conflicts Teaching skills
Influencing Team spirit
Managing feedback Written communication

Table 2. List of soft skills used in this analysis.

3.2. Methods
In order to conduct this study, two key steps were required to process
the data:

→ Job title identification within job postings, i.e. mapping the job title present in each
advert to a standard job title in our database.

This step is highly complex because each company, department or recruiter have its own
particular approach to naming a job. Put differently, there is very little standardization in
the naming of jobs.

For example, a study conducted by LinkedIn and Stanford researchers on job

classification [27] identified no less than 40,000 different alternative titles to the job title
"software engineer". Thus, the magnitude of this hurdle is significant.

→ Soft skills extraction from job postings, i.e. mapping the soft skill variants present in
each advert to the 38 standard soft skills of Table 2.

This exercise is difficult for two reasons. First, the text of the job postings is generally
unstructured, and there is, as a rule, no well-defined section talking about soft skills.

Second, there exist numerous possibilities to refer to each single soft skill; more details on
this point are given in Appendix 4.
 10

4 . Re s u l t s
4.1. Job diversity
The sample studied presents a wide variety of jobs. Indeed, the
analysis of job titles using our algorithm allowed us to identify 1,701
distinct jobs, each associated with 20 or more job postings.

Table 3 displays the main jobs by volume of job postings in the database (9% of total job
postings):

Job Number of job postings

Software developer 19.3k

Commercial sales representative 17.5k
Nurse coordinator 14.8k
IT system administrator 13.4k
Cargo vehicle driver 10.9k

Table 3. Main jobs present in the database, by number of job postings.

4.2. How many soft skills are typically required for

a job?
The vast majority of job postings (88%) contains at least one soft skill. On average, a job
posting mentions 4 soft skills, and 10% of the postings contain 10 soft skills or more.

These numbers confirm the importance of soft skills to recruiters.

4.3. Which soft skills are most (and least)

requested by recruiters?
Figure 1 shows the frequency with which each soft skill appears in our sample, expressed
as a percentage of the total number of job postings.

The analysis of the main soft skills required shows that recruiters are mainly looking for
people who:

• Know how to communicate,

• Are organized,
• Make decisions,
• Have team spirit.
 11

On the other hand, the soft skills least required from candidates ( 1% of all
job offers) are:

• Ambition,
• Patience,
• Networking,
• Perseverance,
• Memory skills.

These skills are important for a narrower range of positions. For example,
"memory skills" is essential for waiters, live performers or actors in theaters,
but is an optional skill for most jobs, including those listed in Table 3.

Figure 1: Soft skills classified according to their frequency of occurrence.

 12

4.4. Which soft skills are required for the jobs most
commonly present in companies?

To answer this question, we extracted the most required soft skills for
some of the typical jobs found in companies.
Specifically, we selected five jobs illustrating different work functions within a company
at various seniority levels. Table 4 shows the most frequently requested skills for these
five jobs.

Job Top 5 soft-skills

Legal service manager Written communication

Oral communication
Time management
Team spirit
Negotiation skills

Human resources director Oral communication

Time management
Written communication
Decision-making and judgement
Analytical skills

Web developer Written communication

Analytical skills
Team spirit
Oral communication
Time management

Chief marketing officer Time management

Written communication
Oral communication
Decision-making and judgement
Analytical skills

Sales manager Oral communication

Written communication
Negotiation skills
Teaching skills
Analytical skills

Table 4. List of the five soft skills most in demand by recruiters for a selection of five jobs.

It is apparent that certain skills are found in the top five of almost all jobs in Table 4.
These core skills are listed in Table 5.
 13

Fundamental soft skills

Written communication Team spirit

Oral communication Adaptability
Time management Analytical skills
Decision-making and judgement Autonomy

Table 5. List of fundamental soft skills.

Shell model of skills

A closer look at the soft skills in Table 5 reveals that these are personal and interpersonal
skills acquired early on, throughout childhood and early school years. These skills form
indeed a fundamental basis for any work environment, as they guarantee that the most
basic professional requirements are satisfied: being punctual, writing emails, working in a
team, etc.

Based on this observation, we can conceptually represent the universe of soft skills as a
series of successive layers - from the fundamental soft skills listed above to soft skills
which are more optional in nature and depend on the work performed. For example, not
all jobs require personnel management, negotiation, networking, etc., but all jobs require
at least a subset of the fundamental skills. Figure 2 provides a better visualization of this
concept.

Written communication
Oral communication
Time management
Decision-making and judgement
Team spirit
Adaptability
Analytical skills
Autonomy

Figure 2: Shell model representation of soft skills: The core is made up of the fundamental soft skills,
while the outer layer contains soft skills which tend to be specific only to certain types of jobs.
 14

Interestingly, even though they are very common and perhaps expected, core skills
are almost always explicitly requested by recruiters in the job postings they
advertise.

4.5. What is the link between soft skills and the

most common corporate functions?

Since most candidates possess the core skills, we

investigated whether certain soft skills are more likely to
help candidates stand out from the competition given the
nature of the open role.

To do this, we looked for soft skills which stand out significantly in different
corporate functions. We thus created 15 groups of jobs, or “functions”, (see
Table 6, first column) corresponding to the corporate functions most
frequently encountered in the company and comprising an average of five
jobs per function.

In order to determine the soft skills specific to each function, we first

calculated the average frequency of appearance of each soft skill in all the
job postings. Then, for each function, we identified the soft skills whose
frequency significantly exceeds the average frequency.

As an example, let us consider the “Administration” function, which includes

jobs such as secretary and administrative assistant. Compared to the soft
skills required in the other functions, the soft skills which are significantly
more required for administrative jobs are:

(1) Memory skills,

(2) Emotional intelligence,
(3) Attention to detail,
(4) Multitasking.

By repeating this procedure for the other functions, we were able to identify
the soft skills requirements which stand out the most for each function
(Table 6).

Beyond the most differentiating two soft skills per function listed in Table 6,
an extended analysis makes it possible to identify, for each function, all the
soft skills that exceed the average frequency of appearance, i.e. the
function’s "specific" soft skills.

It is thus possible to measure the number of specific soft skills that

recruiters are looking for in each of these functions.
 15

Work funtion Specific soft skill 1 Specific soft skill 2

Administration Memory skills Emotional intelligence

Digital Self-confidence Learning skills
Finance Memory skills Rigor
General Management Strategic thinking Decision-making and judgement
Human resources Teaching skills Building rapport with someone
Legal Learning skills Team spirit
Marketing & Communication Positive mindset Drive for results
Operations & After-sales services Perseverance Ability to work under pressure
Production & Maintenance People management Hardworkingness
Purchasing Critical mindset Negotiation skills
Quality Active listening Critical mindset
Research and Development Learning skills Analytical skills
Sales & Account Management Ambition Handling conflicts
Strategy & Consulting Influencing Creativity and innovation
Supply chain, Distribution & Logistics Handling conflicts Adaptability

Table 6. List of the most differentiating soft skills for 15 of the functions most frequently encountered in a company.

Figure 3 shows how the number of specific soft skills varies across the functions
considered in this analysis.

Figure 3: Number of specific soft skills required for 15 of the most frequently encountered functions in a company.

For example, the Sales & Account Management function requires 19 specific soft skills.
The most important skills are ambition, handling conflicts, initiative and client
orientation, followed by negotiation skills and building rapport with someone.
 16

As seen in Figure 3, among the different functions, Human Resources

requires the widest range of soft skills. One possible explanation for this
observation is that the HR function requires extensive contact with internal
and external colleagues. By contrast, the Digital function may conceivably
require a higher share of individual work and consequently a lower amount
of interaction with customers or colleagues.

4.6 Do the soft skills required depend on

the seniority level of the position?

For this question we defined seniority levels according to a

global 6-level system [28].

In order to measure the importance of each soft skill, we classified the skills
according to their frequency of appearance in each of the 6 seniority levels:

• Operators
• Technicians
• Engineers
• Coordinators
• Managers
• Directors & above

We then focused on identifying the soft skills which exhibit the greatest
variation in their skill ranking across the seniority range. To quantify this
effect, we measured the difference between the highest and lowest ranking
of each soft skill within the different seniority groups.

For example, Initiative was ranked 10th for the highest seniority level and
18th for the lowest, a difference of 8 ranks.

For the 3 lowest seniority levels, operators, technicians and engineers, there
is little change in rankings from one level to the next. There is therefore no
significant change between these levels.

On the other hand, significant differences are observed for the three
highest seniority levels, which concern jobs involving people management:
coordinators, managers and directors & above (Figure 4):

• Autonomy (+10 ranks)

• Strategic thinking (+9 ranks)
• Self-confidence (+8 ranks)
• Initiative (+6 ranks)
• People management (+6 ranks)
 17

Figure 4. The most important variations in soft skill requirements according to the level of seniority:
autonomy, initiative taking, staff management, self-confidence and strategic thinking.

In addition, the need for certain soft skills decreases with increasing seniority. This is the
case, for example, for time management (-8 ranks), managing feedback (-7 ranks) and
teaching skills (-5 ranks).

These observations could be explained by the fact that, as they progress in ranks,
managers are increasingly able to delegate these types of activities to support staff or
direct reports.

In conclusion, as was the case for the corporate functions, we find that the soft skills
required by recruiters vary according to the seniority level of the job to be filled.
 18

5. Conclusion
In this study, we measured the importance of soft skills in recruitment.

First, we have identified a compact set of 38 which are most frequently

demanded by employers.

Second, by analyzing 850,000 job postings, we showed that soft skills are
indeed essential to recruitment: nearly 90% of job postings contain soft
skills. On average, a job posting requires four soft skills, and a tenth of all
job postings require ten soft skills or more.

Furthermore, we have found that there exists a base of eight fundamental

soft skills which are essential for nearly any job. These are communication
(written and oral), time management, decision-making and judgment, team
spirit, adaptability, analytical skills and autonomy.

Beyond the fundamental soft skills, we found that certain soft skills, referred
to as “specific” skills, are more often requested in certain jobs and
corporate functions than in others. For example, compared to the soft skills
required in the other functions, the soft skills which are significantly more
required in the Sales & Account Management are ambition and handling
conflicts.

In addition, we found that the number of specific soft skills varies by

function. As an example, the Human Resources function requires the largest
number of specific soft skills (25 out of 38 total).

Finally, we found that the soft skills required also change according to the
seniority level of the job. For example, senior management positions require
more autonomy, initiative, people management, self-confidence, and
strategic thinking.

In conclusion, this study demonstrates and quantifies the link between soft
skills and recruitment. We hope that these results will help human resources
professionals to optimize the content of their job advertisements and
candidates to select and apply for the offers that best match their profile.
 19

6 . Re fe re n c e s
[1] G. Fournet, H. Cottin, C. Ciobanu, “Remote work: an untapped potential?” (2020).

[2] P. Buirel, G. Fournet, H. Cottin, C. Ciobanu, “The impact of automation on skills and jobs:
who needs a skill boost?” (2020).

[3] Heckman, J. J., & Kautz, T. (2012). “Hard evidence on soft skills”. Labour economics, 19(4),
451–464.

[4] Robles, M. M. (2012). “Executive Perceptions of the Top 10 Soft Skills Needed in Today’s
Workplace”. Business Communication Quarterly, 75(4), 453–465.

[5] S. Graham, “Preparing for the 21st Century: Soft Skills Matter”, Huffington Post, April 26,
2015.

[6] The World Economic Forum, “The Future of Jobs Report” (2018) and references therein.
Report publicly available at:
https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2018

[7] "Systems Engineering of Training", CON Reg 350-100-1, US Continental Army Command
(1968).
Report publicly available at:
https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:tv440px2527/tv440px2527.pdf

[8] Fry, J. P. “Instructor Manual - Performance Counseling Workshop”, Fort Bliss, Texas.
This document was also published as HumRRO Consulting Report CR-D5-72-3, August 1972
[Internal], as referred to by J. P. Fry and R. E. Cliborn in “Development, Implementation, and
Evaluation of Leadership/Management Training Within Army Battalions”, Volume 1 (1975).
Report publicly available at:
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED110817.pdf

[9] Whitmore, P. G., "What are soft skills?", Paper presented at the CONARC Soft Skills
Conference, Texas, USA, 12–13 December 1972.
Report publicly available at:
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a099612.pdf

[10] See for example the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_century_skills

and references therein.

[11] C. Dede, “Comparing Frameworks for 21st Century Skills”, published in J. Bellanca & R.
Brandt (Eds.). “21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn”. Bloomington, IN:
Solution Tree Press; 2010: 51 – 75

[12] Karoly, L. A. and C. Panis, “The 21st Century at Work: Forces Shaping the Future
Workforce and Workplace in the United States”, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation,
MG-164-DOL, 2004.
As of May 04, 2020, report available at: https://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/
MG164.html

[13] Levasseur, R. E. (2013). "People Skills: Developing Soft Skills — a Change Management
Perspective", INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics, Vol. 43, No. 6, pp. 566–571 (2013)

[14] Sodhi, M. & Son, B.-G. (2008). ASP, “The Art and Science of Practice: Skills Employers
Want from Operations Research Graduates. Interfaces”. 38. 140-146..

[15] Stovall D. C., Stovall P.S. (2009) Professional accountants: Void of “soft skills”? Bus. Rev.
4(1):99–104.

[16] Richards T, Yellen R, Kappelman L, Guynes S (1998) “Information systems manager’s

perceptions of IS job skills”. J. Comput. Inform. Systems 38(3):53–57
 20

[17] Dixon J., Belnap C., Albrecht C., Lee K. (2010), “The importance of soft skills”. Corporate
Finance Rev. 14(6):35–38

[18] Alam M., Gale A., Brown M., Khan A.I. (2010) “The importance of human skills in project
management professional development”. Internat. J. Managing Projects Bus. 3(3):495–516

[19] Newell D. (2002) “The smarter they are the harder they fall”. Career Development
Internat. 7(5):288–291.

[20] Azim S., Gale A., Lawlor-Wright T., Kirkham R., Khan A., Alam M. (2010) “The
importance of soft skills in complex projects”. Internat. J. Managing Projects Bus. 3(3):387–
401.

[21] This database was accessible through the Discovery Analytics Center at Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University. More information provided in the link below:
https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2016/11/ncr-dacopendataopenjobs.html

[22] ESCO (European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations) is the European
multilingual classification of Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations.

[23] O*NET OnLine is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and
Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), and developed by the National Center for O*NET
Development. O*NET® is a trademark of US Department of Labor.

[24] ISCO is the International Standard Classification of Occupations endorsed by the

governing Body of the International Labor Organization.

[25] ROME (Répertoire Opérationnel des Métiers et des Emplois) is the Pole emploi
database for jobs and skills.

[26] Calanca, F., Sayfullina, L., Minkus, L. et al. “Responsible team players wanted: an
analysis of soft skill requirements in job advertisements”. EPJ Data Sci. 8, 13 (2019).

[27] R. Bekkerman, M. Gavish, “High-Precision Phrase-Based Document Classification on a

Modern Scale”, KDD '11: Proceedings of the 17th ACM SIGKDD international conference on
Knowledge discovery and data mining, p. 231–239 (2011)

[28] See for example, University of Virginia, Human Resources department, “Level Guides,
Position Descriptions and Global Grades”.

[29] P. Bojanowski et al., “Enriching Word Vectors with Subword Information”, Transactions
of the Association for Computational Linguistics, vol. 5, pp. 135–146, 2017
 21

7. A p p e n d i c e s
Appendix 1. Data structure

In the database used for this analysis [21], job postings are primarily free
text, in which one or more of the following sections are easily identifiable:

• Job title
• Required qualifications and previous experiences
• List of responsibilities (duties) for the position
• Company description
• Additional information (which may include salary, place of work, and
other miscellaneous items)

On the other hand, we note that job titles, like most other job
characteristics, are not standardized. Each employer is free to use its own
terms. For example, the same job may be found under several different job
titles (e.g. “administrative assistant” vs “secretary”), depending on the
specific job posting and employer.
 22

Appendix 2. Personal soft skills definition

Personal skills

Ability to work under pressure Dealing with pressure from unexpected circumstances at work.

Adaptability Alter one's attitude or behaviour to accommodate modifications

in the workplace.

Ambition Wish and determination to achieve success, either in the personal

or professional domain.

Analytical skills Ability to analyze and research a problem or a topic, to

decompose it in smaller pieces and develop an in-depth
understanding about it.

Attention to detail Being thorough and careful about detail in completing work tasks.

Autonomy Developing one's own ways of doing things, guiding oneself with
little or no supervision, and depending on oneself to get things
done.

Creativity and innovation Ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic
or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.

Critical mindset Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and
weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to
solving problems.

Decision-making and Considering the relative costs and benefits of potential actions in
judgement order to choose the most appropriate one.

Dedication Strong attachment, support and loyalty for one’s workplace.

Drive for results Establishing and maintaining personally challenging achievement

goals and exerting effort toward achieving these.

Ethical behavior Adherence to moral and ethical principles.

Hardworkingness Ability to put extensive amounts of effort and care into one’s
work.

Initiative Willingness to take on responsibilities and challenges.

Learning skills Show a positive attitude towards new and challenging demands
that can only be met via lifelong learning.

Memory skills Store information such as words, numbers, pictures and

procedures for later retrieval.

Multitasking Executing multiple tasks at the same time, being aware of the key
priorities.

Positive mindset Way of thinking that focuses on the good aspects of work and the
positive results they can generate.
 23

Personal skills

Patience Being able to wait for someone or something which has been
delayed without becoming frustrated.

Perseverance Persistence in the face of obstacles.

Rigor Maintaining a well-reasoned, consistent and disciplined approach

in one’s progress toward an objective.

Self-confidence Understanding one's own abilities and relying on these to deal

with various situations.

Strategic thinking The ability to think broadly (big-picture thinking) and interpret
situations in the larger business context and on the long-term
basis.

Time management Maintain an overview of all the incoming tasks in order to prioritise
the tasks, plan their execution, and integrate new tasks as they
present themselves.
 24

Appendix 3. Interpersonal soft skills definition

Interpersonal skills

Active listening Focus fully on the interlocutor and actively show verbal and
nonverbal signs of listening.

Building rapport with Understand and create a link with people from different cultures,
someone countries, and ideologies without judgements or preconceptions.

Client orientation Actively looking for ways to help others, be it clients or partners.

Emotional intelligence Social perceptiveness. Being aware of others' reactions and

understanding why they react the way they do.

Handling conflicts Mediate in conflicts and tense situations by acting between parties,
such as service users, important others like families, and institutions,
striving to effect an agreement, reconciliate, and resolve problems.

Influencing Persuading others to change their minds or behavior.

Managing feedback Provide feedback to others. Evaluate and respond constructively and
professionally to critical communication from colleagues and
customers.

Negotiation skills Settle differences with others and reach an agreement through
compromise by either party while avoiding argument and dispute.

Networking The developing of contacts or exchanging of information with others

in an informal network, as to further a career.

Oral communication Talking to others to convey information effectively.

People management Manage employees and subordinates, working in a team or

individually, to maximise their performance and contribution.
Schedule their work and activities, give instructions, motivate and
direct the workers to meet the company objectives. Monitor and
measure how an employee undertakes their responsibilities and how
well these activities are executed. Identify areas for improvement
and make suggestions to achieve this. Lead a group of people to help
them achieve goals and maintain an effective working relationship
among staff.

Teaching skills Teaching others how to do something.

Team spirit Coordinating with others / adjusting actions in relation to the others'
actions.

Written communication Communicating effectively in writing as appropriate for the needs of

the audience.
 25

Appendix 4. Further details on the analysis

method
As detailed in Section 3.2, the two main challenges of this
research study were the job title identification and the soft
skills extraction.

JOB TITLE IDENTIFICATION

The two main obstacles to correctly identifying/classifying job titles were

spelling errors in the designation of the jobs and the lack of standard terms
used to describe the job titles. As an example, some job titles were too
generic (such as "Manager"), or on the contrary too specific (such as
"Secretary to the Director - College").

Job title identification was carried out in two stages:

• Job title preprocessing: we first removed terms that were unrelated to the
nature of the job to obtain a “clean” version of the job titles. For example, the
job title "Hotel Front Desk - Texas (nights and weekends)" was changed to
"Hotel Front Desk Clerk".

• Job title matching: we then calculated a matching score between the

“clean” job title and all the job titles in our database. This matching score is
based on the word representation given by FastText [29].

In the previous example, the job title "Hotel Front Desk Clerk " had the
greatest similarity with the "Front Desk Receptionist" which is an alternate
title for the standard job of "Receptionist".

SOFT SKILL EXTRACTION

For the extraction of soft skills, we faced the same difficulties as for the job
title identification, but with the additional complexity that a soft skill can
appear in different sections of a job posting.

To identify the different ways of designating a soft skill, we relied on the

work of Calanca et al. [26], which we extended by automatically generating
combinations of keywords specific to the skills.

For example, the job postings data show that the skill people management
can be found under different verb-noun combinations, with verbs such as
"manage", "supervise", "coordinate", "lead", and nouns such as "people",
"staff", "team", "personnel", "group of”...

We have thus mapped all these variations ("managing people", "managing a

team", "leading a team", ...) so as they link back to people management.
There are on average 50 such variations for each soft skill. All these
variations are used to isolate the soft skills present in each job posting.
 26

Thus, by matching job titles with our standard jobs and extracting the soft
skills present in the job postings, we can consequently associate soft skills to
jobs.

In order to ensure the statistical relevance of our results, we disregarded the

soft skills-to-jobs associations with fewer than 20 occurrences.

CREDITS

Co-authors :
Michele LECIS, Gabrielle FOURNET, Hélène COTTIN, Pierre BUIREL,
Catalin CIOBANU

Contributors :
Cécile BEURTHERET, Grégoire BOUTIN, Vincent LEBUNETEL
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