Skills Recruiters Agree Are the Most Important to Landing a Job [Data Interactive]

Across industries and world regions, two skills stand out as the most important to the job openings corporate recruiters plan to fill with business school grads.

Business school is a fun and unique time to reflect on your life and career, test yourself, and expand your horizons. But if you’re like most prospective students, your motivation lies in what’s beyond business school: landing the job that’s going to set you on your dream career path. A recent survey of more than 1,200 corporate recruiters should give you confidence that business school will take you where you want to go: overall, nearly 9 in 10 recruiters agree that business school graduates are well prepared to be successful at their company.

But what specific skills are recruiters are looking for, and how well does business school prepare their students in those skills?

It turns out that by a wide margin problem solving and working with others are the skills that recruiters say are the most important for the job openings they plan to fill with business school graduates. In fact, across company characteristics—including world region, company type, industry, and company size—these two skills are identified as the most important. And recruiters give business schools high marks for preparing grads with these skills. But don’t take our word for it—explore the data for yourself using the interactive below.

In the dropdown menu, select a company world region, industry, type, or size and see how responses differ.

Where a skill is placed on the graph reflects the level of importance recruiters place on it and how well they say business schools prepare graduates in that skill. The vertical axis reflects the skill’s importance—the higher it appears in the graph, the more importance it is. The horizontal axis reflects preparedness—the further to the right it is, the more recruiters think grads are well prepared in that skill.

You may notice some interesting differences in skill demand by company characteristics. For instance, Asia Pacific companies tend to rate the importance of data analysis and interpretation skills as more important than companies in Europe and the United States. US companies are more likely to rate graduates’ skills in working with others and managing the self higher than companies in Europe and Asia Pacific. Larger employers (e.g., Fortune Global 100 and companies with 10,000 or more employees) tend to give more favorable evaluations across the 10 skills.

Compared with larger companies, smaller companies rate written communication, managing the self, coachability and reflection, and listening as more important to their current job openings. Larger companies rate the skills of data analysis and interpretation, working with others, and oral communication and presentation as more important. Similarly, startups tend to rate several soft skills as relatively more important to their current job openings, including coachability and reflection, managing the self, and listening.

Recruiters in the technology industry place the most importance on the skills of problem solving, working with others, and comprehension and logic. Compared with the technology industry, employers in the consulting sector place more importance on quantitative tasks, oral communication and presentation, and written communication.