A lot has been said and written about technological and scientific specialization as the key to employability. However, a research developed by Google took the company by surprise.

There are several companies and organizations that have started communicating the importance of starting a STEM career among young people, with the goal of improving their employability, among other things.

Professions linked to STEM proliferate, and certain estimations state that they will continue to do so in the following three years, until 2020. They will do it as technology expands and businesses adapt to it.

Back in 2008, when Google reported the conclusions of the so called “Project Oxygen”, it had its first sign: technical knowledge was important but not as relevant as soft skills. The company, after introducing an algorithm that sought to improve recruitment by classifying the best computer science students, also showed that by 2013, among the 8 most important features of successful Google employees, STEM skills where at the bottom line.

The most relevant skills were mostly soft skills, and linked to being a good coach, knowing how to communicate and listen, knowing other people, being sympathetic and knowing how to support their colleagues, being critical thinkers and problem solvers, and being able to make connections through complex ideas.

Google decided to continue the analysis: it summoned anthropologists and ethnographers to further analyse the data, it expanded its apprenticeships programs to include student from humanistic, arts, and even MBA courses of study. It called this initiative “Project Aristotle”, and it divided its teams into “A”, more specialized, and “B”, the others.

The results of the project showed that the most important and productive ideas came from “B” teams, which owned a broad series of soft skills, such as generosity, curiosity towards their peers’ ideas, sympathy, and emotional intelligence.

Clearly, STEM skills are necessary but not enough. We need to develop teams with players training in different skills in order to add value.