(Describer) A person in a helmet welds a pipe. A young woman leads a horse. A student in a lab coat peers through a microscope. A title: Finding Your Pathway: How Parents Can Help -- Episode Six: Professional Skills. Colorful text appears.

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(narrator) Are soft skills really that important? As a society, we've been heavily focused on hard skills such as math, writing, or technology, so we often overlook some of the most important skills needed for the workplace: soft skills. Sometimes they're called professional skills because they include things like communication, teamwork, problem solving, and punctuality. So when it comes down to getting a job, what do businesses look for in new workers? Professional skills are critical in today's businesses. Employers want employees to show up. So attendance and being there on time are absolutely critical. But being able to be problem solvers without having to go and ask what to do, that skill in and of itself is what we hear about over and over again. We want the employees to be trainable but, most importantly, to be committed to the process of learning.

(narrator) This is Tom Burton. He's the superintendent for Princeton City Schools. He works with business partners to help teach his students professional skills.

(Burton) Businesses are saying that "We can work with any student "as long as they're on time "and they want to learn and they have an ability to communicate." If we have businesses that are saddled with those employees that don't have professional skills, we actually see lack of productivity, and we see workplace frustration. When employees are frustrated, not only will they not be performing at a high level, but you're gonna see turnover at epic levels.

(narrator) Think of it this way: people get hired for their hard skills and fired for their professional skills or lack of them. The Association for Talent Development determined that nearly 44% of surveyed business executives in the United States believe that employees lack the professional skills necessary for a company to succeed. If we examine data from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, communication consistently ranks among the top skills employers look for in a new worker followed by a positive attitude, teamwork, self-management, and willingness to learn. So how would a young person learn these skills, and how could parents help?

(speaker) Specific things you can do with your students to help them develop some of those skills are just having dinner with the family where you're talking and everybody's sharing what their day was like.

(narrator) This is Sarah Taylor. She works for Great Oaks Career Campuses, helping students and their parents with career preparation. Helping students to understand that not every day of every career is gonna be perfect. There's gonna be struggles that they have to deal with. And having students share, what did they struggle with at school? Problem solve. How can I solve that? How can I make that situation better? And kids don't get away with just being on their electronic devices and not talking to anybody. Maybe doing some family game stuff where students are having to solve problems or work in teams.

(narrator) In fact, one of the best ways for a young person to learn workplace skills is by modeling them at home. And when a student is old enough, it helps to actually have real-world work experience. Not everything can be learned in an educational context. And I think higher education as well as K-12 education is starting to get it.

(narrator) This is Dr. Kevin Fleming. He's done countless hours of research on this topic.

(Fleming) And there's a lot of dialogue now, far more than there was even ten years ago, about relevant work experience, about apprenticeships, about work-based learning, as they call it, and getting students outside of the classroom, to engage in their communities, to really get good skills. From all the research that I've done, I've found there are four skills that all students need. The students need academic skills. They need to be able to read and write proficiently. They also need to learn resiliency and interpersonal behavior. They need to understand how to get a job and how to keep a job, more importantly. And then fourthly, they need technical skills. If parents really want their child to be prepared for their first, second, third job, the best advice they can give their kid is to get that summer internship. Even if it's a free volunteer position, go out and hustle 40 hours a week and get that work ethic and be prepared to get a real job and to contribute to the community and to society and to give back and to be able to take care of oneself.

(Taylor) I know we don't want our kids to have any problems ever. We'd like to be able to go through life problem-free. But that's not a reality. You're gonna have problems. And so it's okay for your kids to fail sometimes 'cause you can learn a lot from failing and learning that resiliency of getting up. You know, things didn't work, so get back up and try again. So anything you can do to help your children understand that life's not always gonna be success and failure's okay but there's growth in that.

(narrator) When thinking about the future, professional skills are necessary for any career. And with the job market becoming more competitive, businesses are looking for well-rounded workers. It's all about finding the right pathway for each student.

(Describer) Logos appear, including: American Graduate; Corporation for Public Broadcasting; and Ohio Broadcast Educational Media Commission. Copyright 2019. Accessibility provided by the U.S. Department of Education.

Accessibility provided by the U.S. Department of Education.