Going Hard on Soft Skills

Core curriculum changes aim to add critical interpersonal skills for Spears Business undergrads

by Jeff Joiner

Each day, small events take place that sometimes end up being momentous. Joe Eastin, an Oklahoma State University alumnus and president of global company ISN Software, experienced one such event a few years ago that turned into an epiphany for him.

When two young men got on an elevator with Eastin at ISN’s Dallas offices, it was a chance for a minute of face time with the boss. But the two men, both relatively new hires at the company, reacted very differently to the opportunity. One, a recent graduate of Vanderbilt University, asked Eastin about something he had read in the Wall Street Journal and how the issue might affect the company. The other was an OSU graduate who, after a moment of awkward silence, asked Eastin what he thought of a recent Cowboy football game.

Eastin said in just that brief elevator moment he was struck by the differences in communication skills between the two. Curious, he asked about their job performances and discovered the OSU alumnus was working harder and performing head and shoulders above his co-workers. He just wasn’t very good at the interpersonal skill of carrying on a conversation.

“Every year, we’re at the front lines of recruiting young women and men from universities across the country, and we do a good job hiring new graduates with excellent technical skills,” said Eastin, whose company employs more than 500 workers in the United States and internationally. “But we’ve noticed that sometimes these new graduates do not have good professional skills, or soft skills. That experience in the elevator was eye-opening and made me wonder how to better expose college students to these skills.”

For Eastin, the answer was to make a substantial gift to Spears Business that made possible the Eastin Center for Career Readiness, which helps students create résumés, prepare for job interviews and find internships as well as acquire interpersonal skills that universities once didn’t concern themselves with. But that has changed as employers began noticing the need for more than just technical skills.

In a recent ManpowerGroup survey of 2,000 employers, more than 50 percent of organizations listed problem-solving, collaboration, customer service and communication as the most valued skills their workers need.

The Eastin Center is at the heart of Spears’ recent changes in core curriculum requirements, adding mandatory courses to improve students’ soft skills, from professionalism to communication to self-awareness to resiliency. In fact, the center is teaching and assessing undergraduates on career competencies designed to help them be more confident and prepared as they enter the workforce — and maybe avoid awkward elevator moments.

“The people skills gap in corporate America isn’t new,” said Abbey Davis, director of the Eastin Center. “The reason we changed the core curriculum and introduced these classes is because of feedback we’re getting from recruiters and employers who recognize our students for their strong technical proficiency and work ethic but who also see their lack of soft skills.”

All Spears students are now required to take career readiness classes that introduce them to these skills. Freshmen touch on the topic first in Business Administration (BADM) 1111, then again as sophomores in BADM 2111 and juniors in 3111. But students are fully immersed in the critical need for interpersonal skills in BADM 3113 taught by Dr. Andrew Urich, the Eastin Center Chair for Career Readiness, who now works with 450 students in three class sections.

“How do you teach people skills to students and convince them that this really matters? You come up with a story, a message that makes the lightbulb come on for them,” said Urich. “What they need is awareness, understanding and inspiration. We’re making them aware that this is important and helping them understand what these skills actually mean, and then we’re trying to inspire them to think about these skills going forward.”

Urich mentions one of his students, an admitted introvert, who came to him after a class asking for advice on developing stronger interpersonal skills. He encouraged her to take a chance by applying for a job as a sales rep and she ended up being so good at it and so much more confident that she is now working in sales in Washington, D.C.

“You can’t change personalities and behaviors in others directly, but you can inspire them to think about the importance of these things and to try new things that can change the entire trajectory of their life,” he said.

The Eastin Center has identified 17 career competencies that are being introduced to Spears undergraduates in their career readiness and interpersonal skills classes. The 17 are part of a larger set of competencies that make up the Korn Ferry Leadership Architect career competency framework that Spears licenses to use in its curriculum. OSU is the first university to implement the Korn Ferry competency framework, which is used by 93 percent of Fortune 100 companies, at the undergraduate level.

“This is a milestone for us that gives students a language to use regarding these competencies,” Davis said. “When OSU students enter the workforce and know what situational adaptability means, then they’re going to have a leg up on the competition because they now have a language for soft skills that’s more than just, ‘Be more professional.’”

The Korn Ferry career competencies being introduced to Spears’ students are collaboration, communication, managing complexity, courage, resilience, self-awareness, networking, accountability, self-development, valuing differences, trust, decision quality, drive, situational adaptability, and tech, organizational and interpersonal savviness.

“Each week we focus on a different competency and the students assess themselves and pick three people who give them feedback,” Davis said. “We want to measure where they are their sophomore year and then again in their senior year. During this time, we’re teaching them that these skills are important. They’re so important that I would say if you have them, you’re going to have a very successful career.”