Matt Golding Where Widjaja fell down was in the area of "soft skills" that corporations now expect from graduates seeking work. Soft skills are the sort of attributes one might generally find in a personal development course or even marriage counselling: emotional intelligence, communication skills, conflict resolution and creating win-win outcomes via collaboration rather than compromise. In January, McDonald's UK claimed that by 2020, more than half a million British workers will be significantly held back by a lack of soft skills, an issue forecast to affect all sectors. McDonald's also claimed that soft skills contribute £88 billion to the UK economy – and will increase to £109 billion during the next five years. These figures were released as part of a campaign to challenge the idea that soft skills are a woolly concept. In Australia, corporate giants such as KMPG and PricewaterhouseCoopers told The Sunday Age that soft skills were now valued more than technical ability. For Jason Widjaja, 35, who already has an MBA, it was a matter of going back to school. Last month, he began a masters in business analytics, a brand new course at the Melbourne Business School established in response to the growing demand for data analysis experts in big business. About as nerdsville as you can get, on the face of it – except 20 per cent of the course, one day a week, is devoted to teaching soft skills.

"Data analysis is highly technical and plays to my strengths," Widjaja says. "But I chose this particular school because of the soft skills component." During orientation week, senior executives from companies such as Deloitte, Telstra, AT Kearney and Carlton United Breweries attend a meet and greet drinks night. Prior to the meeting, students were given one-on-one schooling in delivering an ``elevator pitch" – where they would reveal something intriguing about themselves to the big shots in the time it takes to ride an elevator. Says Widjaja: "A couple of the students worked the room, but I think most of us struggled." He reckons about 75 per cent of the class of 36 are introverts. "It's good to have people on a shared journey, so we can learn together. I think it's important to have a safe space to give and receive feedback and not be judged or penalised in the professional setting; that's what I hope to get out of this course." Associate Professor Jennifer George is director of the new masters program, and a maths whiz specialising in the application of complex models and quantitative techniques to business problems. She obtained her PhD from Stanford in queueing theory, the mathematics of congestion. She's also a soft skills enthusiast.

"They're about negotiating environments where you have no positional power," she says. "They're about having the personal skills to influence ... what consultants like to call business savvy. They're about understanding what's going on in the heads of executives and what they care about." How to navigate corporate politics? "That's part of it." George says there are "very sad stories" of analytics teams that were excellent technically, producing brilliant reports that never got beyond the team. "I have heard of whole teams getting the axe from a company, not because of their skills, but because ... they couldn't sell what they had done. So the company says, 'we have never used any of their recommendations and they are just a cost'. All because the connection was never made." It's not only the team that suffers (through neglect or termination). George has worked in business as well as academia, and is on the board of two companies. She has seen "a board of directors about to make the wrong decision" because good data was sold poorly. So how do you turn math-brain introverts into winning salesman? Role play, feedback, and more role play.

Two weeks ago, a group of actors worked with the students on voice projection, posture and other elements of personal presentation.The actors will return this month to play the boss to whom the students have to tell bad news. Says George: "We'll give a them a half-page scenario and say `here is the bad news: how are you going to deliver it?' We'll have a small group observing to provide feedback about what they could have done differently." The scene is then played again with some different tactics. George says the push for Melbourne Business School to take this route came from business leaders. And the business sector, says Debra Eckersley, managing partner human capital for PricewaterhouseCoopers, says the rise of soft skills is a consequence of "listening to clients and what they value". Over the past three years, Eckersley says, PwC has instituted a professional framework in which technical capability is only one of five skills expected from employees. The others are leadership ("how inclusive and authentic a leader I am, how I lead myself and others"); relationships ("how do I build genuine relationships built on trust"); business acumen (innovations and business knowledge) and global acumen ("how I transcend across borders and cultures").

Says Eckersley: "For someone who is very strong technically but unable to deliver on the other aspects, it's only a niche role they can play. Sometimes we can find the right place for them, but it's a huge challenge for their career progression." She says graduates are "very aware that great marks alone will not get them through the door. They ask `what do we need to do?' It's about knowing who you are. Self-awareness. We have a big focus on building authenticity. So don't try and fake it, we will catch you up. We're looking for potential ... across a broader range of talents." Susan Ferrier is national managing partner people, performance and culture for KPMG. She says the company has undergone a cultural transformation over the last seven years "taking people who are technically expert to being all-round business advisers". As part of this culture change, job-seeking graduates are screened for emotional intelligence, because it gives a strong indication as to how they handle pressure. ``We have an interview process where we ask our graduates ... to tell stories about how they have managed certain situations," Ms Ferrier says. "My favourite question is `tell me a time where you influenced somebody to do something they did not want to do'."

Graduates are also asked to talk about a piece of work or something they have done in their lives that failed. "From follow-up questions, you hear back from the individual what they did to manage the failure [emotionally and practically] and how they learned from their mistakes." Ferrier believes that soft skills "are the new hard skills". Because the internet provides a great storehouse of easily accessible knowledge, "having big parts of your brain storing technical stuff is going to be less valuable in the world of the future", she says. "How you collaborate, solve problems creatively and authentically lead people will matter more." Tony Gleeson is executive general manager of the Australian Institute of Management. He says that over the past 20 years, as companies have cut staff to remain competitive and profitable, large portions of middle management have been pruned away, leaving a knowledge deficit. Where graduates were once mentored into more well-rounded workers, "companies now want job-ready individuals".