What Employers Ask About First
Hint: It’s not the technical skills
Throughout my career in higher education, I’ve learned that the skills employers ask about first are rarely the technical ones. They ask whether people can communicate, resolve conflict, and lead a team through change.
In my role as Associate Director of Workforce Strategy and Operations for The Center for Professional Development, I hear from employers across Kentucky and beyond: Technical skills get someone hired, but professional skills determine whether they grow, lead, and stay.
The research backs this up. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that seven in ten employers rank analytical thinking as an essential core skill, with resilience, flexibility, and leadership close behind. NACE’s Job Outlook 2025 reports that nearly 90 percent of employers look for problem-solving ability and nearly 80 percent look for teamwork.
The same trend is showing up as AI and data become more common in the workplace. The WEF report identifies AI and big data as the fastest-growing skills in demand. Using these tools effectively requires more than writing a good prompt. It requires the judgment to ask the right questions. Where did this data come from? What is it not showing me? Does this conclusion actually hold up, or does it just sound confident?
That second layer of judgment is trainable. It looks a lot like the critical thinking we’ve always taught, but applied to a new set of tools. Prompting is only the beginning. Interpreting, questioning, and deciding are where real value gets created.
At the Center for Professional Development, we build professional training to strengthen the soft skills that make teams work and the analytical skills required to prompt AI effectively and turn its output into sound decisions.
By combining innovative technology with educational expertise and thoughtful design, we’re ready to help you create training that makes a difference for your people and your organization. If you’re ready to strengthen these skills, we would be glad to have a conversation.
Written by: Dr. Lois McWhorter, PhD | July 14, 2026
