A recent Washington Post article by Cathy N. Davidson, professor at CUNY, shares the surprising results of two Google projects that analyzed employee performance metrics. The first, in 2013, ‘Project Oxygen’, examined 15 years of data to determine whether the hiring criteria that had been set in 1998 was working. Google had ranked “strong STEM skills” as the highest hiring criterion. The study, however, showed that having good communication and problem-solving skills ranked higher.
The second Google study in spring 2017, ‘Project Aristotle’, focused on team success. This study echoed findings in Project Oxygen by concluding that the best teams were not the ‘A-team’ STEM superstars. ‘B-teams’ - made up of those who exhibited curiosity about others’ ideas, generosity, and most importantly, emotional safety for team members to speak their minds and make mistakes, performed better.
These studies align with survey results from 260 large and small companies, which ranked communication skills in the top three most sought after qualities for job recruiters. Davidson quotes Steve Jobs, who famously said that “technology alone is not enough,” -- it takes interpersonal skills to fully realize STEM expertise.