MBAs Have The People-Skills Edge. Employers Still Struggle To Measure It

While concern schools unreserved to fold generative AI into each country of the MBA – from admissions essays to lawsuit studies to capstones – a caller survey suggests the much stubborn obstacle to landing a leadership-track occupation hasn't moved overmuch successful years: It's radical skills, not AI skills.

And employers accidental they're atrocious astatine measuring them.

The findings travel from a survey of 500 U.S. hiring managers and concern leaders, conducted connected behalf of Eastern Washington University to pass selling for its online MBA successful Organizational Leadership – and they onshore successful the mediate of the treatment underway astatine concern schools astir wherever AI fits successful absorption education.

THE PEOPLE PROBLEM AT THE TOP OF THE FUNNEL

At the halfway of the survey: 60% of employers accidental they've rejected an otherwise-qualified finalist due to the fact that of anemic radical oregon connection skills, and 53% accidental they promoted idiosyncratic successful the past twelvemonth chiefly for radical skills implicit method ability. For leadership-track roles specifically, 79% accidental those human-centered competencies present outweigh tiny differences successful AI oregon method skill, an absorbing fig fixed however overmuch attraction B-schools person devoted to AI fluency implicit the past 2 years.

Elsewhere successful the survey the aforesaid employers concede they're not equipped to find these "human skills" earlier they hire. Seventy-five percent accidental brushed skills are harder to measure reliably than method ones, and 13% admit they don't formally measure human-centered enactment skills astatine each during the hiring process. To their credit, 66% accidental they're assessing these skills much rigorously than they were 2 years ago, and 23% accidental they've accrued spending connected soft-skill improvement successful the past year.

WHERE THE MBA ADVANTAGE ACTUALLY LIVES

The survey's astir pointed uncovering for B-schools whitethorn beryllium this: MBA graduates' biggest borderline implicit bachelor's grade holders isn't successful AI oregon information skills but successful precisely the quality competencies employers accidental they can't measure. 

MBA grads scored astir 10 percent points higher than bachelor's grads crossed each evaluated competencies overall, a spread that explodes to 22 points successful coaching and mentoring and 19 points successful struggle resolution. The vantage is smaller but inactive notable successful affectional quality (14 points), strategical reasoning (11 points), adaptability nether alteration (10 points), verbal oregon presumption connection (9 points), written connection (7 points) and ethical decision-making (7 points).

Compare that with AI collaboration and information literacy, the skills astir associated with the AI arms contention successful concern education, wherever MBA grads clasp conscionable a 2-point and 1-point edge, respectively, implicit bachelor's grads. In different words, the MBA's calling paper with employers isn't that it produces amended AI users, it's that it produces amended coaches, communicators, and conflict-resolvers – the qualities employers accidental are some decisive and hardest to verify connected a resume oregon successful an interview.