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o, <br />What Are the Skills Needed for <br />Work Readiness? <br />Determining the necessary skills for successful performance of specific job duties is the focus of a <br />large body of research in industrial and organizational psychology. This research targets identifying a <br />combination of factors (skills, abilities, personal characteristics) that best predict an individual's ability to <br />perform successfully on the job. The literature overwhelmingly provides support that measures of <br />foundational cognitive skills, or general cognitive ability, are the best predictors of on- the -job <br />performance 4° It is also generally accepted that noncognitive behaviors, or soft skills, add accuracy to <br />performance prediction," For example, personality measures have been shown to increase the <br />predictive ,power by 18 %, and integrity tests by 27 %, over cognitive assessments alone." <br />Soft skills are defined as personal characteristics and behavioral skills that enhance an individual's <br />interactions, job performance, and career prospects across a broad range of settings. Examples of soft <br />skills include adaptability, communication skills, cooperation, discipline, and integrity. The value of <br />measuring soft skills in determining work readiness has also been addressed via national employer <br />surveys, which reveal that soft skills are highly valued by employers and are often found to be lacking in <br />entry -level workers .13 <br />Work Readiness Standards and Benchmarks <br />Work readiness standards are precise descriptions of the knowledge and combination of skills that <br />individuals need to be minimally qualified for a target occupation and are determined by the level of <br />skills profiled for a national representative sample of jobs in a given occupation. Imagine that skill <br />combinations can he shown by a bar graph that contains different heights for each skill level, If an <br />occupation requires a combination of eight unique skills with varying levels from 1 -5 for each skill, that <br />would equal 390,625 different skill signatures. This allows us to more precisely measure skills gaps <br />between individual skill signatures and the skill standards that employers require. <br />To demonstrate how work readiness standards are derived, we will examine two occupations as <br />identified in O'NET. First, we identify the tasks that are important for an occupation such as an <br />accountant, followed by those that are important for a welder. <br />ACT <br />F -2 <br />Page 100 <br />