independent work and team work (socio-emotional skills), both about 14 percent.<sup>38</sup> Contrary to the Indonesian survey, basic cognitive skills, while the most important skill for 5-10 percent of Filipino employers, ranked far below socio-emotional skills (diGropello 2010).

Two studies provide some information that the largest countries in the South Asian region most value socio-emotional skills. Nearly 1000 employers in the Sindh Province of Pakistan identified punctuality (86 percent), honesty (84 percent), commitment (65 percent), and reliability (83 percent) as the most important skills in hiring new workers (Hamid, Imaizumi and Blom 2011). Higher-order cognitive skills were also ranked highly, but not as highly as socio-emotional skills, with communications skills (69 percent) topping the list, closely followed by customer relations skills (68 percent). An Indian study of 157 firms that hire engineers report that “core employability” skills<sup>39</sup> were the most important skill set, with communications skills (higher-order cognitive) ranked second and professional skills last; this ranking is statistically significant (Blom and Saeki 2011). Within core employability skills, integrity was ranked highest.

Turning to gap analysis, Western European employers most lament the lack of technical and higher-order cognitive skills. The Western European studies only asked about skills gaps. Manpower interviewed employers in 23 countries, mostly Western European countries,<sup>40</sup> asking them the main reason they had difficulty in filling jobs (Manpower 2012). The employers replied that hard (technical) skills are most lacking (34 percent), followed by lack of available applicants and lack of experience. Soft skills come in a distant fourth, identified by 16 percent of respondents. The three European country studies in our sample, all from the UK, are consistent with the Manpower study results. Learning and Skills Council (2008) ranks technical skills (53 percent), communications skills (33 percent) and customer relations (32 percent) as the largest skills gaps, similar to UKCES (2012), which identifies job specific skills (49 percent) as most lacking. CBI (2012) has a slightly different ranking, with customer awareness topping the rankings (at 46-70 percent), following by knowledge of a foreign language and self-

> 38 The predetermined skills in the survey were split into two groups.  The key “core” skills, which map to our higher-order, basic, and socio-emotional skills are: problem solving, leadership, communications, independent work, creativity, negotiations, teamwork, literacy, time management, initiative, math, writing, language, and computer skills.  The key “job-specific” skills, which map to our technical skills, are: practical experience, local degree, experience in the same field, theory, general experience, grades, experience in a different field, secondary school diploma, technical qualifications, foreign degree, and vocational/technical qualifications.

> 39 Integrity, reliability, teamwork, willingness to learn, entrepreneurship, self-discipline, self-motivation, flexibility, understand/take directions, empathy

> 40 Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Israel, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK

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