Work and digital innovation: Soft Skills today are evaluated in the Cloud

Already in 1918, a study by Charles Riborg Mann showed that 85% of work success is given by interpersonal skills and only 15% by technical skills. Today, the first category of skills is called soft skills and the second hard skills, but the fundamental concept does not change: soft skills, or personal attitudes, are essential to fill a role and adapt to the context in the company.

Companies and human resources departments know this well, so much so that one of the primary activities is interviews, precisely to assess whether the aptitudes of candidates are in line with those required by companies offering job positions.

Thanks to the collaboration in the university context between the Centro Universitario Internazionale and the University of Padua, faculty of psychology, it was already understood on the threshold of the new millennium that all human resources activities would be digitized and brought to the web. Giuseppe Sartori, well-known academic in the field of neuroscience research, and Demetrio Macheda, academic fellow of the Centro Universitario Internazionale, professor in the field of applied neuroscience and expert in e-learning platforms—making use of their previous experiences developed since 1999 with an analysis model based on neural networks (PDP)—have created an analysis model (called Skill View, 2004) that could be easily used by companies for the scientific evaluation of personality and soft skills. This model, validated by tens of thousands of tests carried out in the field, guarantees companies and consulting firms objective evaluations to support the decision-making processes present in all human resources processes: from attraction to onboarding and from engagement to retain.

The analysis model was digitized and brought online thanks to collaboration with the WebRatio software factory, and thus the Original Skills cloud system was born: a software as a service for the selection and evaluation of personnel, with analysis and reporting that are customizable according to the roles’ needs and business contexts.

"Prof. Macheda, how does Original Skills work and how does it evaluate soft skills?"

“Companies looking for or evaluating human resources can define within the Original Skills dashboard what the soft skills are and determine the score for each skill needed to fill a role. Original skills automatically generate a questionnaire based on the definition made, which candidates can complete online and independently.

It is a 120-question test based on the theory of the Neo-PI-R personality study, made in compliance with current scientific theories and psychometric calculation, according to the standards of the American Psychological Association (APA) and updated with both the results of the psychological research and with those provided by cognitive neuroscience. The test has a reliability of 92% because it has been validated by over 67,000 tests carried out in the field."

"What advantages does an automatic system in the cloud bring to candidates and HR professionals?"

“The system takes advantage of all the benefits of digitalization and cloud systems: the questionnaire can be completed at any time, even remotely, from a smartphone or tablet. It lasts only 10 minutes and allows a savings of 90% of the evaluation time, which is useful for human resources staff to focus on analyzing results, evaluating multiple candidates, or improving the definition of the necessary skills.

The JobFit system allows you to define the skills required for each role sought, diversifying them according to the professional figure.

In addition, recruiting companies can also take advantage of the benefits of the digital automation of data mining, analysis, and reporting, which bring advanced tools such as Job Fit to the Original Skills dashboard, which shows the difference between the expected ideal value and that of the candidate, or other tolls such as the analysis of needs and the measurement of progress.”

It is possible to have precise data on human resources needs in order to be able to do targeted training in the specific areas encountered and to objectively monitor progress after the coaching provided to human resources.

“How was Original Skills made?”

“The cloud system was created with WebRatio’s rapid Low-Code Development technology, which, thanks to a visual approach, made it possible to initially create the software as a service in a few weeks, in order to immediately start testing in the field the validity of the questionnaire, and then add all the features of a more advanced analysis and reporting in a few days, as the number of completed tests and the needs of companies increased.”

“Where does the partnership with the WebRatio software factory come from?”

“The partnership that has bound me to WebRatio for years is based on the common intention of simplifying processes through digital innovation. The Low-Code technology they have implemented and the skills of the developers’ team have simplified and accelerated the creation and continuous improvement of Original Skills, with an iterative approach that allows our cloud system to always be in step with the latest news in the field. HR is constantly evolving—I would say revolutionizing—because digital technologies are rewriting the rules of the game in this field, as in any other sector."

Original Skills is one of the innovations that can bring value to the field of human resources through digital transformation because, as Prof. Macheda states, “From the meeting of cognitive and computer sciences, systems can be born that truly enhance human capital because, today, employee experience management is more important than ever in companies in order to make sure the best talents don’t run away."

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