When Paul Harter got his start in the manufacturing industry, it was a little like working inside a plastic bubble.

“I turned a dial over and over and over. I didn’t interact with anyone,” Harter said. “My interpersonal skills weren’t an issue — as long as I didn’t get into a fight in the break room.”

The work environment today couldn’t be more different. Just the other day, Harter, president and CEO of Aqua-Hot Heating Systems in Frederick, watched as an employee on the plant floor noticed a quality issue with a part they were manufacturing and walked over to another employee so the two could put their heads together and figure out a solution.

“A single worker that used to oversee one machine is now doing four or five things, and they have a high level of interaction with their co-workers,” Harter said.

“We’re so interdependent. No one stands in a bubble and pushes buttons all day, not in this industry,” he said. “Those companies are going out of business fast.”

For local employers such as Harter, though, finding workers not only with the right technical skills but also the necessary soft skills — things like teamwork, communication and punctuality — has become increasingly difficult in Colorado’s tight labor market.

Of more than 500 recruiters and hiring managers in Colorado surveyed this year by LinkedIn, 41 percent of recruiters and 46 percent of hiring managers reported that it is hard to find job candidates with the right soft skills.

That lines up with national data released last week by the business networking service: across the U.S., 59 percent of hiring managers surveyed said soft skills were “difficult” to find, compared to 53 percent who said hard skills were a challenge. A total of 58 percent of respondents also said the lack of soft skills among job seekers was “limiting their company’s productivity.”

“There are more employers that claim that soft skills are hard to find than hard skills,” LinkedIn economist Guy Berger said. “It’s a pretty pervasive problem.”

Not enough attention

A disconnect exists between the most in-demand soft skills and the ones typically given the most energy, Berger said.

“Discussions about soft skills tend to focus on high-level things — management, leadership,” he said. “Our data suggests that they’re a lot less important than entry-level soft skills, like being able to communicate.”

Communication topped a LinkedIn analysis of the profiles of members who changed employers between June 2014 and June 2015. Organization, teamwork, punctuality, critical thinking, social skills, creativity, interpersonal communication, adaptability and friendly personality rounded out the top 10 most sought-after skills.

In comparison, the least in-demand soft skills included business planning, team building, coaching, analysis and team management.

The U.S. economy’s shift from manufacturing to service jobs, automation and educational institutions not keeping up with the changes have all contributed to the soft skills gap, Berger said.

“It’s something that has been gradually evolving over a long period of time,” he said. “It has to do with how the majority of jobs look different today than they did 50, 60 years ago.”

In hopes of narrowing the gap, LinkedIn has created a new online curriculum on Lynda.com to help job seekers master the most in-demand soft skills.

Skillful, a middle-skills job initiative that launched in Colorado this year, also is investing significant time and energy into helping both employers and employees bridge the soft-skills gap.

“One of the things we’ve heard again and again from employers is while they hire on the hard skills, they fire on the soft skills,” said Wan-Lae Cheng, managing director and chief operating officer of the Markle Foundation, which launched Skillful in conjunction with LinkedIn. “It’s what makes or breaks someone being successful on the job.”

“Interactive snapshots” on the Skillful website give job seekers an overview of how much they can expect to make in a specific field, the number of jobs available and the skills required. That includes both hard and soft skills that employers are looking for, based on extensive research with primary employers.

A computer user support specialist, for example, needs technical skill in basic core operating systems, telecommunications and testing, as well as soft skills such as active listening, coordination and problem solving.

Skillful also incorporates soft skills into its in-person events and coaching. A recent event for women in advanced manufacturing included a talk from a marketing consultant about the importance of communication skills and some best practices.

On the employer side, Skillfull is working closely with a handful of local companies to help embed soft skills into their own training, so workers not only have opportunities to “up-skill” on the technical side but also the soft side, Cheng said.

“As you think about the different types of jobs and how technology is playing more of a role in routine work, it becomes incumbent on the human to bring the problem solving and critical thinking and management of the process,” she said. “In some ways that has magnified the problem, or at least brought more attention to it.”

Hiring in-house help

At Techtonic Group, a Boulder software development company, a key recent hire was a former teacher who is tasked with helping employees hone their soft skills.

Techtonic has an in-house apprenticeship program that teaches at-risk youth, women and veterans to code, but they have found even college graduates can use some help on the soft skill side, CEO Heather Terenzio said.

“Technology these days is a much more collaborative environment,” Terenzio said. “We focus on paired programming, which means two people working side by side to get good code written.”

Lessons have included everything from effective communication and how to make persuasive presentations to separating your work life from your home life and how to best express frustration in the workplace.

“Among software developers, the dress code is a very low bar, but we’ve even had to draw the line at sweatpants — no sweatpants at the office. We’ve had that conversation,” Terenzio said. “Even though it’s a super-casual environment, there are still clear lines on what is appropriate and what isn’t appropriate in the office.”

Harter, Aqua-Hot’s CEO, said by his estimates, only two of every 10 candidates who walk in the door to apply for production jobs have the soft skills they need to succeed. The company manufactures heating systems for heavy vehicles such as RVs.

“We struggle in the workplace — how do we teach this stuff? We can teach you how to weld, we can teach you how to work a machine, but we struggle with teaching soft skills,” Harter said. “The very first place those things are on display is in the interview, and when you don’t see them, the interview’s over.”

“We’ve all got the anecdote of the person who came into the interview in sweats, a ballcap and sunglasses and wouldn’t even take off the sunglasses,” he said. “People will come in and tell you horrible stories about their last employer and how everyone was out to get them and use foul language during the interview.”

Over the past few years, Aqua-Hot has spent considerable time working on soft skills, bringing in outside consultants to help the company become more purposeful about things like collaboration and train employees to better interact with each another based on their unique strengths and weaknesses.

“Once you’ve made all that effort, boy, you better go to work on retention, because the person next door needs people just as badly,” Harter said. “They’re going to be looking at your parking lot.”