The Importance of “Soft Skills”

There’s a major benefit growing up working class, and teaching at a college where most of the students come from a working class background.?Most of the students have experience with a terrible job.?

???????????So when graduates start their real career in biotechnology, they tend to do really well. Those terrible jobs served the purpose of teaching “soft skills” or “workplace skills” or “employability skills.” ?(There is a trend to try to develop a different term, but if you say soft skills everyone knows what you mean.) ??In their job at a fast food restaurant or working retail at the mall, they developed the character traits and interpersonal skills needed to excel in their future career. They learned these in the restaurant when the hungry and cranky customer yelled at them for something that wasn’t their fault and they just had to take it – and then work on the solution to the problem. Students universally undervalue that experience.?

At every meeting that I have with industry leaders – every single one – the first thing that they say is “I need someone with ‘soft skills.’”?This statement remains the universal first statement – no exceptions.?I often think to myself “that’s what you are saying, but you are going to hire based on technical skills,” but I keep my mouth shut.?Industry leaders want a worker who shows up on time, are engaged (and not on their phone), exhibits professionalism and seriousness (in this business the stakes are high), works in a team, practices critical thinking, has honed their communication skills (written and verbal), demonstrates emotional intelligence and situational awareness (ability to read the room), displays common sense, maintains emotional control, displays manners and friendliness and respectfulness, radiates enthusiasm and positivity/ optimism and energy, conveys empathy, shows creativity, demonstrates time-management ability and patience and an ability to multi-task, demonstrates a willingness to be coached, exudes friendly confidence with humility, and has self-awareness.?Ambition is good, but must be tempered, measured, subtle.?I can’t express to students how valuable that their early experience was and how well it will serve them for their entire career.

All community college biotech programs try to run biotech labs more like a workplace rather than a classroom.?The Solano College laboratories meet on Fridays from 8 – 5.?Students take lunch is taken on the cell’s schedule, not on any human schedule.?Everything is structured through teams.?And the programs simulate Good Manufacturing Practice.?But at the end of the day, a simulated classroom experience isn’t the same as a real job.????

The former Human Resources manager of Genentech Vacaville used to say, “second only to experience in pharmaceutical manufacturing, I favor experience from In-N-Out Burger.?They have a very defined training program, well defined procedures, strict record keeping, and workers must work as a team and multitask.”?My son worked at In-N-Out while finishing his Solano College biotech major, graduated from UC Santa Cruz, then a Masters in Synthetic Biotechnology and Biotechnology from the University of Edinburgh, and now works in the biotech industry.?His comment:?“this career is much easier than In-N-Out.”?

For all of my students who went through this, there is no entitled attitude.?

And these jobs have become very tough.?As we learned in “the great resignation,” customers are terrible.?I is hard to believe the stories that students tell about serving customers in the local restaurant.??I ask them, “How can someone be mean to you when you are handing them pizza and beer?”?I don’t get it, but the stories have become pretty universal.

Later I tell them – “your days with jobs are over – you are in a career now.”?I want them to internalize that and to think career, and not job.?I’ll pass them off to their industry mentors to council them on networking, negotiation, conflict resolution, stress management, and leadership.????

When I was at Genentech I observed something that I called “the Genentech switch.”?I noticed that our adjunct faculty from Genentech used the Genentech switch in the classroom.?If the meeting is planned to start at 10 AM, then the room is really loose and people are joking and very chatty at 9:50.?But when the clock struck 10, everyone focused like a laser on the subject.?It was as if you flipped a switch.??I advise students to cultivate the switch.?It’s a “Work Hard, Play Hard” attitude.?Informal behavior is best, when it is appropriate.?But when it’s time to work, then formality reigns and get down to work.?Develop the switch – and flip it.

Managers are reporting that fewer workers come in with these soft skills well developed.?Part of this is because fewer high school students have an after-school job than in the past.?In the grind to buff that university application, students opt for year-round sports, band camp, coding camp, student government, and peer-tutoring rather than an after-school or summer job.?While these are valuable, they aren’t the same.?Students aren’t exposed to adults who must watch the cash register, perform customer service, and manage employees.?Those extracurricular activities?polish their college applications, but don’t develop “soft skills.”?The extracurricular activities do not develop the sense of independence and personal responsibility.?They do not teach how to deal with that difficult co-workers.?And it doesn’t not build financial literacy.

There are two future articles contained in the last sentence.?The first is the need to incorporate some financial literacy lessons into a program.?And the second is the tremendous burden that student debt imposes on students.?But those are stories for a different time.

And another story for a different time is the reports of graduates about some of their managers.?Some of those managers need to go to soft skill training.?But graduates often developed their ability to discern good leadership from poor leadership on the job.?

Community college graduates do not have the public “brand” enjoyed by their university counterparts.?They have to impress with their knowledge, skills, and actions.?And much of the knowledge of how to negotiate the work environment comes from previous jobs, not from their schooling.?They don’t appreciated it until I explicitly point it out.?

It’s their superpower.?