Hard skills are not enough, soft skills are also must-have for great Tech talent and many just don't have them. This article takes a specific look at the place of soft skills within the Silicon Valley context.

1. HIRING
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TECH LASH
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SAN FRANCISCO BUSINESS TIMES
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Alisha Green covers technology,
startups and venture capital
Why more tech companies are looking
for workers equipped with 'soft skills'
In order to progress
along with a company,
employees have to get
along in their company
Forget the tech talent gap: A growing
number ofcompanies are also screening
for "soft skills" and finding many tech
job candidates lacking.
More than three-fourths of human
resources leaders have become more
focused on finding tech employees with
strong soft skills over the past three
years, according to a recent survey by
consulting firm West Monroe Partners. It
fits with trends in the Bay Area tech sec-
tor. Increasingly, attributes dubbed "soft
skills" - things like being a team player,
having good communication skills, and
knowing how to manage workplace dis-
agreements - are beinggiven greaterpri-
ority, even ifit means losing out on tech-
nical prowess.
Nationwide, a resounding 98 percent
ofhuman resources leaders consider soft
skills and leadership potential when hir-
ing tech workers, the West Monroe Part-
ners study found, and 43 percent ofthem
said tech roles are harder to fill than oth-
er openings because candidates for those
jobs lack strong soft skills.
It's not just a professed commitment
to those traits: More than two-thirds
of human resources leaders surveyed
have withheld a job offer to an other-
wise qualified candidate for a tech role
because they lacked soft skills.
Those involved in tech hir-
It may seem counterintuitive for a
startup trying to grow quickly to reject
an exceptionally technically-skilled can-
didate based on their lack of soft skills,
but startups are also trying to sell them-
selves to candidates based on their pos-
itive team culture, which often boils
down to values like being team players
and communicating effectively.
ing in the Bay Area say there
'It is almostare several factors at work. A
Living up to that kind of
branding can work to a com-
pany's benefit these days as
millennials in particular look
forcompanies that have those
kinds ofvalues and mission.
growing reliance on remote
workers means employees
must be able to communi-
cate effectively. Companies
are also realizing that "soft
skills" can help retain talent.
impossible to
do anything
significant
working
"The kind ofcompany that
stands for somethlng is the
kind ofcompany that people
Zapier, which makes alone.' want to join and want to stay
software to help move data
between apps, has an entire- JOCELYN GOLDFEIN,
managing director
ly remote team. It focuses its
interviews on making sure Partners
job candidates have the writ-
(at), so their retention rates
are extremely high," said Jana
Rich, founder and CEOofSan
Francisco-based recruiting
at Zetta Venture
ten communication skills
necessary to do things like share criti-
cism in a constructive way. Manyjob can-
didates struggle with the written com-
munication skills they'd need to succeed
in a remote environment though, Zapier
CEO Wade Foster said.
"That rules out a_good chunk of folks
a lot of the time," he said.
firm Rich Talent Group.
The recognition of the
importance of soft skills in tech is infil-
trating computer science programs at
universities and coding bootcamps.
Jocelyn Goldfein, managing director
at investment firm Zetta Venture Part-
ners, teaches a class at Stanford Uni-
versity with tech entrepreneur Mauria
Finley on "Effective Leadership in High
• BY THE NUMBERS
CAUSE AND EFFECT
A lack of soft skills in a tech team can have
ripple effects in a business, according to
consulting firm West Monroe Partners.
Some of the most common issues
business people said they had in working
with their tech counterparts:
62percent
cited verbal miscommunication
44percent
cited poor teamwork
38percent
cited written miscommunication
Those issues working with tech teams
resulted in a range of business issues:
71percent
said projects were delayed
43percent
said there was a lower quality of work
33percent
said they missed deadlines
SOURCE: WEST MONROE PARTNERS STUDY.
"CLOSING THE TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP GAP"
TODD JOHNSON
Tech." The idea for the course came from
asking Stanford students what would
be most helpful to them going into the
workplace. One answer struck Goldfein,
a former engineering lead at VMware
and Facebook: Students feel they're told
throughout their education that it is
their destiny to start great tech compa-
nies, but they don't know how to react
when someone is mean to them in a code
review, where colleagues critique their
programming.
Students aren't required to take class-
es focused on developing soft skills as
part of their curriculum, but "software
engineering is a job that is comprehen-
sively collaborative," Goldfein said.
...Tt1salmost impossible to do anything
significant working alone," Goldfein
said. "You certainly can't have a job in
a company and work alone because it is
the nature ofcode to intersect with oth-
er code, which means the people writ-
ing code have to interact, not to mention
all the other functions like product man-
agement and design and QA whose work
interacts with yours."
In the software engineering program
at the Holberton School in San Francis-
co, students with the best soft skills are
often the ones getting the jobs first and
the best jobs," said Sylvain Kalache, the
school's co-founder.