When 'Soft Skills' Are Really Unwritten Rules
Employers say young people lack work-readiness. But some of what is being measured may be familiarity with unstated, and often neurotypical, conventions.
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Author – John Harrington
The phrase ‘work-ready’ sounds reassuringly objective. In practice, it can conceal a great deal.
The phrase ‘work-ready’ sounds reassuringly objective. In practice, it can conceal a great deal.
New Department for Work and Pensions research found that 41% of employers regarded young people’s soft skills or work-readiness as a hiring challenge. Work experience concerned 40%, resilience 32% and technical skills 31%.
These concerns should not simply be dismissed. Communication, organisation, judgement and adaptability matter in most jobs. Employers are entitled to recruit people who can meet the genuine requirements of a role.
The difficulty is that ‘soft skills’ can become a catch-all description for behaving in familiar ways: making eye contact, responding quickly, speaking confidently, reading the room, tolerating ambiguity and understanding instructions that nobody has made explicit.
That risks turning neurotypical presentation into an informal selection criterion.
Capability or familiarity?
None of this proves that every unsuccessful candidate has been treated unfairly. It does suggest that employers should separate three things that are often bundled together:
- The capabilities genuinely required to perform the job.
- Skills that can reasonably be developed through onboarding and experience.
- Conventions that merely reflect how existing employees are accustomed to behaving.
Technology can harden a questionable assumption
AI-supported tools can filter applications, score video interviews, analyse language or rank employees against patterns in historical data. If previous success was associated with a particular communication style, career history or pattern of visible activity, the system may reproduce that preference at scale.
In the EU, employment systems used to filter applications and evaluate candidates are treated as high-risk under the AI Act, although detailed obligations have been delayed. Wider EU policy is also moving towards greater scrutiny of algorithmic management, automated monitoring and their effect on psychosocial risk.
A supplier’s assurance that a tool is unbiased is not enough. Employers need to understand what it measures, whether the measure is actually relevant to performance, how different cognitive styles may be affected and whether a human can challenge an implausible result.
A Cognitive Fairness Review
- Does the selection method assess job performance or interview performance?
- Which forms of communication, speed or behaviour are being treated as indicators of potential?
- Can candidates request an alternative format without disclosing more than necessary?
- Could historical data encode the preferences of an already homogeneous workforce?
- Are managers able and authorised to override automated recommendations?
- Does onboarding explain expectations explicitly, or rely on social inference?
The same questions apply after recruitment. Response-time metrics, activity trackers and automated performance scores can confuse visibility with value. An employee who spends longer analysing a problem may create greater value than somebody who generates more rapid, countable activity.
Work readiness is shared
That means clearer recruitment, structured onboarding, accessible assessment and performance measures tied to real contribution.
The most innovative employers will not lower the bar. They will become much more precise about what the bar is actually measuring.
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