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Soft Skill Development Is Essential: Students Aren’t Ready for the Workforce

Written by Bill Laurienti

Teacher Trevor Muir, wrote a blog on a thought-provoking topic; soft-skills are not necessarily ‘soft,’ they should be called ‘essential skills.’

To support that, five of the main reasons millennials get fired is because they lack these essential skills.

Those skills include:

  • Independence
  • Confidence
  • Composure
  • Communication
  • Vision

We need to take a new approach to these skills and make soft-skill development an essential part of education—right next to English, math, science and history.

Muir’s point is that there is nothing soft about getting fired. If employers are looking for these skills, why do they take a back seat in education?

This issue is not the teacher’s fault, it is a systematic issue that needs to be corrected so future generations can be successful.

Communication, collaboration, critical thinking, work ethic, and confidence are essential skills for young people to have and they gain those skills every day in a SmartLab Learning solution.

To learn and master those skills, we should ensure they play a larger role in our students’ education. According to LinkedIn, 92% of talent professionals and hiring managers say that soft skills are just as important, if not more important, as hard skills.

Helping learners develop next-gen skills is intentionally designed into every SmartLab Learning solution.
Bill.Laurienti
Bill Laurienti

Bill Laurienti is a Content Marketing Specialist at Creative Learning Systems. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Secondary Education (English) from Colorado Mesa University and a Master of Arts in Secondary Teaching from the University of California's Rossier School of Education. Bill came to CLS after 10 years in the secondary classroom. He believes SmartLabs are important tools for engaging unengaged students and helping them access careers they might not otherwise have imagined.

Case Study

Going beyond STEM to teach essential skills

When the team at Jewell Houston Academy, a magnet school in Texas, looked for a STEM program, they wanted one that would not only engage students in STEM careers but could also teach conflict-resolution, problem-solving, collaboration, and communication skills.

Read about how the SmartLab HQ impacted both learners and enrollment.