Technical skills get you hired. Soft skills decide how far you go: how well you work with others, handle pressure, influence decisions, and lead. As AI takes on more routine work, they matter more every year.
This guide explains what soft skills are, how they differ from hard skills, the soft skills employers want most, and how to improve them. It also shares data from more than 29,000 practice conversations on VirtualSpeech, showing which soft skills people find hardest and which improve fastest with practice.
What are soft skills?
Soft skills are the personal and interpersonal abilities that shape how you work with other people and approach your work. They include communication, listening, empathy, teamwork, adaptability, problem-solving and leadership. Unlike technical skills, they apply to almost every job, and they’re harder to measure, which is partly why they’re often undervalued.
Soft skills vs hard skills
| Hard skills | Soft skills | |
|---|---|---|
| What they are | Technical, job-specific abilities | Personal and interpersonal abilities |
| Examples | Coding, accounting, data analysis, a language, operating equipment | Communication, empathy, teamwork, adaptability, leadership |
| How they’re learned | Courses, qualifications, on-the-job training | Practice, feedback and experience |
| How they’re measured | Tests, certificates, portfolios | Observation, feedback, scored practice |
| How long they stay relevant | Can date quickly as tools change | Transfer across roles and industries |
Most jobs need both. Hard skills show you can do the work; soft skills show you can do it with other people, under pressure and as things change.
Why soft skills matter
They drive career progression
Promotions, especially into management, depend more on how people work with others than on technical skill alone. In a 2017 iCIMS survey, 94% of recruiting professionals said an employee with stronger soft skills had a better chance of promotion to a leadership role than one with more experience but weaker soft skills.
Work is more collaborative than ever
Most work now happens across teams, functions and time zones. Projects succeed or fail on communication, trust and how well people handle disagreement.
Customers expect it
Products are easy to copy; the experience of dealing with people isn’t. Listening, empathy and clear explanation are what customers and clients remember.
Automation makes them more valuable
As AI and automation take on routine and technical tasks, the work left for people is increasingly about judgment, relationships, and persuasion. Soft skills are among the hardest to automate, so their share of what makes someone valuable keeps growing.
Employers struggle to find them
Recruiters consistently report that candidates’ soft skills lag behind their technical qualifications, especially among graduates. Our data below shows where the biggest gaps are.
11 soft skills employers want, with examples
| Soft skill | What it looks like at work |
|---|---|
| Communication | Explaining a complex idea in plain language; writing a clear update; presenting a proposal |
| Active listening | Paraphrasing what a colleague said before responding; asking follow-up questions |
| Emotional intelligence | Noticing a team member is stressed and adjusting your approach; staying calm in a tense meeting |
| Collaboration and teamwork | Sharing credit; coordinating with another team to hit a shared deadline |
| Adaptability | Learning a new tool quickly; changing plans when priorities shift |
| Cognitive flexibility | Seeing a problem from a customer’s, a colleague’s and a manager’s point of view |
| Critical thinking | Questioning assumptions in a report before acting on it |
| Complex problem-solving | Breaking down an unclear problem, weighing options and recommending one |
| Creativity and curiosity | Suggesting a new way to run a process; asking why things are done the way they are |
| Customer service | Handling a frustrated customer so they leave satisfied |
| Negotiation and persuasion | Agreeing a budget, timeline or contract that works for both sides |
Two more matter as people progress: giving feedback and leadership, the ability to set direction and bring people with you. See our guide to leadership skills.
Which soft skills are hardest? What practice data shows
We analyzed 29,453 practice conversations on VirtualSpeech between May and October 2026, from feedback conversations and customer complaints to negotiations and job interviews. Each conversation scores five skills, which we grouped into 10 soft skills: almost 78,000 skill scores in total.
People are better at being calm and kind than at influencing. The highest-scoring soft skills were problem-solving and collaboration (6.5 out of 10), composure and professional tone (6.1), and empathy (6.1). The lowest were showing the impact of your work (4.0), persuasion and influence (4.6), and handling pushback and conflict (4.8).
The weakest three have something in common: they ask you to hold your ground, back up your point or make a case for yourself. Being agreeable comes more naturally than being persuasive.
Students and professionals have different gaps. Professionals scored higher on almost every soft skill, but the biggest gaps were in the assertive ones:
| Soft skill | University accounts | Company accounts |
|---|---|---|
| Feedback and coaching | 5.1 | 6.1 |
| Persuasion and influence | 3.9 | 4.8 |
| Handling pushback and conflict | 4.4 | 5.1 |
| Composure and professional tone | 5.8 | 6.4 |
| Showing impact and results | 4.0 | 4.5 |
| Active listening | 5.5 | 5.8 |
| Asking questions | 5.6 | 5.5 |
| Problem-solving and collaboration | 6.4 | 6.5 |
Students asked questions as well as professionals did, but struggled to give feedback, argue a case and stay composed under pressure. Those are exactly the skills employers say graduates lack. See our guide to employability skills.
The weakest skills improve fastest. When people repeated the same conversation, 60% scored higher overall on the second attempt. The biggest gains were in the hardest skills: handling pushback rose by more than a point on average, and feedback, showing impact and persuasion all rose by 0.8 to 0.9.
In other words, the soft skills people find hardest aren’t fixed traits. They respond quickly to practice and feedback.
What people choose to work on. Listening was the most practiced soft skill in roleplays. In one-to-one Skills Coaching sessions with our AI coach, the most popular topics were reframing confrontational language, paraphrasing for active listening, and listening for the bigger picture.
Soft skills gaps at work, and how to find them
What is a skills gap?
A skills gap is the difference between the skills people have and the skills their role needs. Soft skills gaps are easy to miss because they rarely show up on a CV or in a performance metric, yet they affect everything: missed sales, failed projects, staff turnover and slow promotions.
The cost of soft skills gaps
- Productivity: unclear communication causes rework, delays and duplicated effort.
- Retention: poor management conversations are a leading reason people leave.
- Customer experience: customers remember how they were treated more than what they bought.
- Leadership pipeline: people promoted for technical skill struggle when they first manage others.
How to do a soft skills gap analysis
- Define the soft skills each role needs, using your competency framework or the list above.
- Assess current skills. Combine manager observation, 360-degree feedback, self-assessment and, ideally, scored practice in realistic scenarios.
- Compare and prioritize. Focus on the gaps that matter most for performance, rather than everything at once.
- Plan training. Match each gap to practice: roleplays for conversations, presentations for public speaking, coaching for planning.
- Measure and repeat. Reassess after training and again a few months later.
Measuring progress
Soft skills used to be hard to measure. Scored practice changes that let you compare each person’s scores on the same scenario before and after training, and see progress skill by skill across a team or cohort.
How to improve your soft skills
- Pick one skill at a time. Choose the one that would make the biggest difference to your role right now.
- Learn the framework. Many soft skills have simple models, such as SBI for feedback or paraphrasing for active listening.
- Practice in realistic situations. Rehearse the conversation or presentation before the real thing, with a colleague, a coach or an AI roleplay.
- Get specific feedback. “Good job” doesn’t help; “you didn’t ask about their view before proposing a solution” does.
- Try again straight away. In our data, most people improved on their second attempt, and the hardest skills improved most.
- Reflect on real conversations. After an important meeting, ask yourself what went well and what you’d change.
How to train soft skills in your team
Focus on the 5 Cs
A simple way to prioritize is the 5 Cs of soft skills training: communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and company behaviors, meaning the values and ways of working specific to your organization. Curiosity is sometimes added as a sixth.
Design the program
- Decide which soft skills to train, based on your gap analysis and business goals.
- Measure the starting point, for example with a scored baseline practice conversation.
- Choose the format. Combine short explainers with realistic practice and feedback, in the browser or in VR.
- Roll it out as a program, with a cohort, a start date and assigned practice, rather than an optional library.
- Build in repetition. Require a second attempt, and schedule a refresher a few weeks later.
- Report on progress, by skill and by team, and use it to plan the next round.
Frequently asked questions
What are soft skills?
Personal and interpersonal abilities, such as communication, listening, empathy, teamwork, and adaptability, that shape how you work with other people.
What are examples of soft skills?
Communication, active listening, emotional intelligence, teamwork, adaptability, critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, customer service, negotiation and leadership.
What is the difference between soft skills and hard skills?
Hard skills are technical, job-specific abilities, such as coding or accounting. Soft skills are interpersonal abilities that apply across jobs, such as communication and teamwork.
Why are soft skills important?
They drive promotion, collaboration and customer relationships, and they’re among the hardest skills to automate, so they matter more as AI takes on routine work.
Which soft skills are hardest to learn?
In our 2026 practice data, the lowest-scoring soft skills were showing the impact of your work, persuasion and influence, and handling pushback and conflict.
Can soft skills be learned?
Yes. In our data, 60% of people scored higher when they repeated a practice conversation, and the hardest skills improved the most.
How do you measure soft skills?
Through observation, 360-degree feedback, self-assessment, and scored practice in realistic scenarios, comparing results before and after training.
How we did this analysis
We analyzed 29,453 AI roleplay sessions on VirtualSpeech between May 1 and October 23, 2026, across 1,008 scenarios and 25 languages. Each session scores five skills out of 10. We grouped the skill names into 10 soft skills, covering 77,963 scores (54% of all skill scores). University and company accounts were identified by email domain. Second-attempt figures compare the first and second attempt at the same scenario, using individual accounts only and excluding shared lab headsets, free trials and internal accounts. All data was anonymized and aggregated.
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