Interpersonal skills, communication abilities and critical thinking are among the soft talents employers will be on the lookout for when hiring this year. (Photo: Shutterstock)
The good news is that employers are planning on hiring in 2019, with 50 percent saying they have open positions for which they can't find qualified candidates. The bad news is that more plan to recruit for gig workers and part-timers than plan to do so for full-timers.
Those are among the findings of an annual CareerBuilder study, which also reports that 32 percent of workers across all skill levels plan to change jobs in 2019.
And while 40 percent of employers planning to recruit for full-time employees this year are outnumbered by the 47 percent planning to seek part-time and contract employees, all of them might be interested in the reasons those workers looking to move this year left their last jobs seeking greener pastures: low compensation or a lack of benefits and poor company culture.
Related: Hiring is up, but so are job cuts
Last year 44 percent of employers were looking for full-timers, compared with 51 percent who were looking for contract or part-time workers.
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While 59 percent of bosses say they're willing to train workers when necessary to get the right qualifications—and 56 percent have spent the money to do so—they're also looking for soft as well as hard skills this year. In fact, 92 percent say that interpersonal skills, communication abilities and critical thinking are among the soft talents they need. They're also looking for the ability to be team-oriented (51 percent), attention to detail (49 percent) and the skills for customer service (46 percent). And 80 percent say that soft skills can be as or even more important than hard skills when hiring.
But 66 percent of employees say that their company doesn't offer educational opportunities or workshops outside of work hours for new skills they could use. Of those employees, 73 percent say they would be somewhat or extremely likely to participate if such opportunities were offered.
And while 29 percent of employers expect the average salary increase for existing employees to be five percent or more in 2019, compared to 2018, it's probably a good thing for the rest that employees do consider some other factors besides salary in taking a job: among the things they look for that they say can be even more important than money are location (56 percent), affordable benefits plans (55 percent), job stability (55 percent), a good boss (48 percent) and good work culture (44 percent).
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Marlene Satter
Marlene Y. Satter has worked in and written about the financial industry for decades.
