Soft skills employers look for in a recession

By: Shelby Campbell, Edited by: Rebecca Munday, Reviewed by: Holly Lee

Published: June 20, 2025

In uncertain and often stressful economic environments, companies sometimes respond with layoffs and reduced hiring. What soft skills can help you gain employment or stay in your current role during a recession?

Explore the recession-proof soft skills you need to become an essential team member and sign up for a course on edX today.

What are soft skills?

Soft skills are personal attributes and interpersonal abilities that help you work with others and manage your responsibilities. While technical, "hard" skills like coding or accounting are industry-specific and measurable, soft skills are transferable and refer to how you interact with colleagues, stay organized, and solve problems.

Examples of soft skills include:

Creativity
Emotional intelligence
Integrity
Open-mindedness
Attention-to-detail

"Staying focused, optimistic, and productive under pressure or uncertainty is crucial during tough economic times," said Holly Lee, a talent leader and interview trainer with over 20 years of experience at companies like Amazon, Google, and Meta. "Employers look for professionals who can manage multiple projects and make intelligent decisions about where to invest their efforts for maximum impact."

Top recession-proof soft skills

Adaptability

Adaptability refers to an individual's capacity to adjust to new circumstances. According to Lee, this soft skill shows employers that you can easily shift your processes and priorities to produce valuable work through political and economic shifts and technological advancements.

During a recession, companies often implement new technologies, systems, and goals to reduce spending and increase revenue. Adaptable employees help minimize resistance and confusion during periods of disruption, driving productivity and quality throughout the change management process.

Problem-solving

Problem-solving skills are an individual's ability to work through various obstacles. Effective problem-solvers create value for companies by identifying hangups, ideating solutions, and executing them before further issues develop.

Lee said employers look to hire people with problem-solving skills during recessions because the longer a problem persists, the more time and resources it takes away from completing an organization's strategic goals. By being a problem-solver, your work can reduce a company's spending and provide measurable evidence that you're an asset to the team.

Communication

Good workplace communication is the ability to share ideas, opinions, or critiques in a non-disruptive, constructive manner. Lee emphasized the importance of effective communication "when working in lean teams, managing uncertainty, or collaborating in a hybrid and remote environment."

Miscommunication is a major cause of workplace conflict. A report by the Workplace Peace Institute found that as of 2024, employees in the U.S. spent two hours per week dealing with conflict, which equates to a productivity loss of about $3,200 per employee per year. Avoiding communication breakdowns that lead to conflict at work can save your organization time, money, and resources.

Collaboration and teamwork

Collaboration and teamwork in the workplace involve sharing ideas, projects, and responsibilities with colleagues. Regardless of your industry, role, or organization, collaboration is essential for solving problems and staying on track to achieve goals. People who work well with their teammates can reduce conflict and promote progress, making the skill essential during recessions.

Collaboration is also a critical skill for using AI. By using AI like a human assistant rather than a tool, you can innovate new ways to adapt your skills for the future.

Time- and self-management

Time management is the ability to allocate an appropriate amount of time, effort, and resources to completing a task. People with time management skills can save a company money during a recession by staying productive and minimizing the labor and resources necessary to do their jobs.

"Prioritization and self-management require professionals to take initiative, recommend improvements, and be able to self-manage," Lee said. These skills are particularly valuable when companies are trying to innovate during economic downturns.

How to strengthen soft skills in a recession

Everyone has soft skills they've gained throughout life — and anyone can develop these skills further. Here are some ways to strengthen your soft skills and make yourself an invaluable part of your organization:

Request feedback from trusted peers: The people you've worked with may have insights about
Determine areas to improve: You can't grow without identifying your skill deficits. Seek feedback or self-evaluate using examples from completed projects to help understand your strengths and weaknesses.
Observe peers and mentors: Find someone in your workplace with skills that align with those you're trying to develop. Consider meeting with them and discussing their tactics. They likely had to develop those skills intentionally, too.
Build good habits: The more you exercise your new skills, the more ingrained they'll become. Volunteer for projects that require skills you want to develop and focus on them throughout the process.
Reflect and pivot: Soft skill development is a lifelong pursuit. In time, you can look back on how you've grown and identify new ways to continue building your soft skills.

How to demonstrate soft skills on your résumé

It's easy to list soft skills on your résumé. But, according to Lee, recruiters prefer to see examples of times you used those skills and measurable results. You can do this when describing your responsibilities in past roles.

For example, someone in computer and data science can demonstrate soft skills by describing projects they worked on:

Adaptability: Assumed project management responsibilities during a team lead's absence, keeping project timelines on track.
Problem-solving: Diagnosed and resolved a memory leak in a C++ embedded system, improving stability and reducing crashes by 50%.
Communication: Developed quarterly reports for company leadership, resulting in a 15% increase in on-time deliverables.
Collaboration: Upgraded and debugged embedded systems software in partnership with a team of three QA engineers, reducing system latency by 20%
Time management: Resolved critical production issues while maintaining progress on priorities and timeline, ensuring no missed deliverables during Q3 or Q4 of 2024.

Your next steps on edX

Ready to recession-proof your skills? Here are your next steps:

Complete a professional development course on edX.
Develop skills that can help you become a manager with edX's Executive Education programs.
Become credentialed to demonstrate your soft skills with professional certificates on edX.
Find a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree program in communications or business management on edX and start creating a new career path.