Many new graduates and some experienced professionals think that hard skills and technical expertise are all that is necessary to land a job. While industry-related expertise is important, if you graduate with a particular degree or possess several years of relevant experience, you will most likely already have the necessary background.
What distinguishes one individual from the rest are often the soft skills, which are not necessarily taught in college. At least, that’s what Bloomberg Businessweek found out when it interviewed 1,320 corporate recruiters to get their take.
The corporate recruiters reported rare skills that companies are in high demand for. The list included these top three soft skills for the tech industry:
- Leadership skills
- Strategic thinking
- Communication
The recruiters also reported the top schools graduating MBAs that they found did the best job of imparting these skills to its graduates:
- Communication: Duke (Fuqua), UC Berkeley (Haas), Northwestern (Kellogg)
- Leadership: Michigan (Ross), UC Berkeley (Haas), Harvard
- Strategic Thinking: Michican (Ross), UT Austin (McCombs), UC Berkeley (Haas)
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