Most recruiters nowadays put emphasis on social skills, personal qualities and life experiences when they look for an employee. Others however believe that good qualifications are required for job success. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
It has become a growing trend among employers to hire people with excellent social skills. In fact, some employers give more importance to social skills than academic qualifications. Some people, however, argue that a person’s educational qualifications should be the prime deciding factor in the recruitment process. I don’t agree with this view because in this modern era social skills are essential to survive in the workplace.
There are many reasons why companies prefer employees with good social skills. Firstly, thanks to globalisation now local industries have to deal with multinational corporations. Good communication and negotiation skills help build better trade relations. Thus in order to expand their business globally, companies are recruiting people with good social skills. For example, now India has a booming call centre industry. If one wants to find a job in this sector one needs good command of English language.
There is yet another reason to hire employees with good social skills. The various departments of modern organisations are interconnected and thus to augment the productivity and smoother functioning, it is necessary to have great understanding among these departments. For example, in many enterprises, the IT department has to work with the HR department and the marketing department. In this situation, if employees lack good communication skills, it may lead to conflicts and chaos.
However, there is an important argument against the emphasis on social skills. The backbone of any successful business is the intellectual power of its employees. One can’t produce great products with social skills. One needs technical and academic knowledge for that.
To conclude, educational qualifications are definitely important and they must be considered while hiring employees. However, in this day and age social skills are also becoming equally important. And in some sectors that require a lot of interactions with people, social skills are more important than academic skills.