Cangrade has released new original research, The 5 Soft Skills for Success in the AI Era, analyzing more than 200 real employer-authored job postings with “AI” in the title. Using its AI-powered soft skill modeling technology, the study identified five human competencies that consistently appear across technical, research, healthcare, marketing, operational roles, industries, and seniority levels—demonstrating that employers are actively prioritizing these skills in AI-related hiring today.
Quick Intel
The research highlights a key dynamic in the AI workforce: while AI excels at processing speed, scale, and pattern recognition, employers are explicitly seeking humans to supply judgment, context, creativity, precision, and long-term vision. These skills appear repeatedly across diverse AI job descriptions, signaling that technical expertise alone is insufficient for success in AI-enabled environments.
Rather than predicting future needs, the study captures present-day hiring reality—showing that soft skills are already embedded in the most sought-after AI roles. This trend suggests that organizations relying solely on technical qualifications or experience may overlook candidates who can truly maximize AI's value through human strengths.
“These findings don’t reflect what employers say will matter in the future — they reflect what they’re already hiring for right now. And when the same human skills keep showing up across hundreds of unrelated AI roles, that’s not noise, it’s evidence,” said Gershon Goren, Founder and CEO, Cangrade. “That shows us that as AI adoption accelerates, demand for core human skills is only becoming more consistent.”
For HR and talent leaders, the implications are clear: hiring processes must evolve to reliably measure soft skills such as critical thinking, creative problem-solving, and strategic judgment. As AI tooling changes quickly, these human competencies are likely to remain essential predictors of long-term success.
About Cangrade
For HR leaders, Cangrade is the AI candidate screening platform. By building custom candidate screening flows instantly, Cangrade fuels talent decisions that improve business and employee outcomes throughout the entire talent lifecycle. Delivering 10x more accurate predictions of talent success and retention than traditional methods, the company’s screening solutions have helped organizations like Wayfair, FDNY, Lamar Advertising, and Applied Industrial Technologies make the right hiring decisions for over 10 million candidates and counting.
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