Why the importance of soft skills in hiring keeps rising

The people signal is clear: while AI hiring tools are scaling fast, the qualities that define career longevity—adaptability, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence—are gaining ground. This shift isn’t a soft trend. It’s a structural rebalancing of what hiring is meant to measure.

According to a new report from TestGorilla, 60% of employers now say soft skills are more important than five years ago. That’s not just HR sentiment—it reflects a change in what organizations believe drives value under stress. And it's a pivot with lasting implications, especially when more than half of global firms are dropping degree requirements altogether.

We’re watching a growing divergence between technical proficiency and sustained contribution. In previous cycles, companies focused hiring around functional credentials. But that model broke under remote work strain and team fragmentation.

Now, 70% of managers say evaluating the "whole candidate"—personality, values, and culture fit—is essential to making good hires. The reasoning is strategic: cultural misalignment and low emotional intelligence lead to attrition and poor team outcomes, even when technical skills are strong. Companies are no longer hiring only for output. They’re hiring for adaptability under change, decision quality under pressure, and influence across functions.

In effect, hiring has become a forecasting function. Employers are looking for people who don’t just fit today’s job—but who can navigate what tomorrow’s might look like.

Seventy percent of US business owners now use AI to support recruitment. From résumé screening to behavioral analysis, algorithms are increasingly efficient. But efficiency doesn’t guarantee alignment. That’s the crux of the problem.

Ninety-two percent of those who use AI say it has improved results—but 63% still find it harder to source top talent than last year. Why? Because AI optimizes for match, not for growth potential or relational fit. The illusion of perfect filtering hides the reality that hiring remains a human-dependent decision.

The irony is that as AI gets more accurate at sorting, the real differentiator becomes what it can’t measure: social fluency, resilience, and values clarity. These are not bonuses—they’re the basis for high-functioning, future-proof teams.

The most telling shift is in what employers now consider “must-have” skills. In 2024, AI proficiency was a top hiring criterion. In 2025, it has dropped to 38%. Replacing it? Skills like public speaking, conflict resolution, stakeholder engagement, and real-time adaptability.

In other words, skills that help people lead, defuse tension, and build bridges across silos.

This doesn’t mean technical skills are irrelevant. But in sectors with rising complexity and low predictability, it's not the specialist who scales—it’s the integrator, the communicator, the situational leader.

What this signals is a move away from narrow expertise as the anchor of employability. The new premium is on those who can learn in motion, lead without title, and collaborate without ego.

This soft skills shift is especially pronounced in the UK and US, but the contrast with MENA and Southeast Asia markets is instructive. In many Asian contexts, academic credentials and hierarchical deference still shape hiring logic—at least on paper.

However, forward-leaning firms in the GCC and Singapore are starting to experiment. Government-linked entities are trialing soft-skills-led interview formats. Multinationals are deploying values-based screening early in the funnel. These aren’t cosmetic tweaks—they’re acknowledgments that technical skill gaps are trainable, but low EQ isn’t.

The pivot is happening faster in agile, export-facing sectors—tech, professional services, client-driven roles. But even in manufacturing and logistics, adaptability is now a hiring threshold, not a bonus.

The reweighting of soft skills in hiring is not a trend—it’s a systems adaptation to operational volatility. When environments shift faster than job descriptions, people who think clearly, collaborate deftly, and de-escalate friction are the ones who keep companies on course.

For strategy leads, the implication is this: your hiring model is not just a pipeline—it’s a signal. If it over-indexes on static technical benchmarks, it may produce brittle teams. If it integrates holistic candidate evaluation, it becomes an early indicator of resilience.

Soft skills aren’t soft. They’re structural. And the firms that treat them as such will be the ones that scale culture, not just headcount.