Soft skills as durable-adaptive capital: industry insights for career construction across the lifespan Open Access

Recently, the alignment of workforce development with industry needs has emerged as a critical challenge, underscored by severe skills shortages across the European Union (European Commission, 2022a). This deficit is emphasised by a structural divergence in skill profiles between emerging and declining occupational roles (World Economic Forum, 2025), necessitating complex, individualised career transitions (McDonald, 2018; Tomlinson et al., 2018 in Akkermans et al., 2024). Simultaneously, there is a pronounced and rising demand for soft skills (Fernández-Macías and Sostero, 2024), generally conceptualised as a combination of personal, social and interpersonal competencies, including other cognitive and metacognitive competencies associated with reasoning, such as critical thinking, creativity or problem-solving (Haselberger et al., 2012).

This demand is highly captured through big data analysis based on Online Job Advertisements (OJA) (e.g. Börner et al., 2018; Burning Glass Technology, 2015; Gardiner et al., 2017; Grüger and Schneider, 2019; Gurcan and Cagiltay, 2019; Lovaglio et al., 2018; Pater et al., 2019; Prüfer and Prüfer, 2019; Verma et al., 2019). OJA data have emerged as a promising resource for analysing macro-level views of labour market dynamics, offering insights into job demands, changing skill requirements and sectoral shifts (Napierala and Kvetan, 2023). While quantitative labour market analysis is essential for tracking macro trends, it can obscure the complex and evolving role of soft skills. Fernández-Macías and Sostero (2024) therefore argue that OJA data should be complemented with traditional sources to improve accuracy and reduce bias.

Rising interest in soft skills can be grounded in their socio-economic function: social skills reduce coordination costs – the time, effort and friction required to communicate, align expectations and manage interdependencies – thereby amplifying the value of cognitive skills in non-routine, unpredictable work (Deming, 2017). Such unpredictability places today’s workforce within a Schumpeterian dynamic of “creative destruction,” where successive technological innovations render prior knowledge obsolete. In response, individuals and organisations are compelled to develop what Jones and Newman (1995) termed “adaptive capital”: the learning required to keep pace with emerging technologies. Complementing the economic view of adaptive capital, Career Construction Theory (CCT) frames career development as an active, ongoing process of meaning-making and adaptation (Savickas, 2021). Specifically, the Career Construction Model of Adaptation (CCMA) outlines career development as an interplay between individual agency and social expectations, through a sequence of adaptive readiness, adaptive resources, adapting responses and adaption results (Rudolph et al., 2017).

Although the concept of adaptive capital has recently been extended to refer to digital competencies in an era of AI – specifically defined as the adaptive forms of human capital developed under challenging conditions through structured and applied learning (Drydakis, 2025) – this framework has not been broadly adopted within the core literature concerning soft skills. Given the critical relevance of these skills, the new demands for talent in an age of AI and the necessity for adaptive capital in contexts marked by rapid technological flux, the purpose of this study is to analyse in-demand soft skills from an integrated perspective. We aim to uncover the dynamics by which soft skills can function as durable-adaptive capital in strengthening career construction. In alignment with the European Union of Skills agenda for building resilience and competitiveness (European Commission, 2024), the article aims to strengthen individual career construction and work adjustment across the lifespan at the intersection of higher education and the workplace by exploring implications for (a) individuals’ adaptability and career construction across the lifespan; (b) educational institutions and their continuous education strategies; (c) novel forms of career guidance and workforce development initiatives.

By triangulating industry perspectives with economic and vocational psychology theories, this research aims to strengthen evidence-based career guidance and lifelong learning strategies, moving beyond the limits of purely quantitative or macro-level analysis to offer a clearer, more integrated account of the evolving role of soft skills in contemporary workforce development. The study poses the following general research question:

How can economic perspectives and vocational psychological framework regarding durable-adaptive capital articulate the perceived value and increasing demand for soft skills in the evolving labour environment?

To respond to the general research question, two specific research questions (RQ) were posed:

This study contributes to higher education, applied labour market research and lifelong learning in three ways. Firstly, it examines industry representatives’ perspectives to explain the dynamics underlying the prominence of soft skills across dynamic labour markets. Secondly, it identifies the specific attributes that render these skills highly valued for employability. Thirdly, it connects soft skills research with the economic framing of adaptive capital and the psychosocial strategies of CCT. Together, these contributions offer an integrated, data-driven framework for understanding how individuals can build the resilient capacity necessary for navigating a labour market defined by up/reskilling and continuous adaptation.

Since the early 2010s, the analysis of soft skills has gained increasing attention across academia, public policy and society at large, with interest continuing to grow in recent years. Yet the concept lacks a consensus definition of boundaries (Table 1).

Among these definitions, there is a prevailing perspective that frames soft skills as individual attributes that agents “have”—what Holmes (2013) terms the “possessive approach”. However, less conventional views frame their development as a dynamic process of identity construction, wherein employability is a negotiated state and individuals exercise agency to navigate market barriers (Holmes, 2013). Furthermore, more critical accounts suggest that soft skills can reflect inherited social positions or serve to mask labour precarity, shifting training costs from firms to the state and individuals (Payne, 2004).

Beyond the theoretical debates, the tangible impact of these skills is substantiated by robust empirical evidence. While technical skills have traditionally dominated recruitment (Deepa and Seth, 2013), research indicates that soft skills correlate strongly with labour market outcomes, often commanding wage differentials comparable to or exceeding those of hard skills (Deming, 2017; Heckman et al., 2006). This valuation reflects the structural shift from production-based to service-driven knowledge economies, where soft skills can serve as differentiators for organisational performance and competitive advantage (Majid et al., 2019). Furthermore, in a context of rapid technological obsolescence, hard skills may depreciate quickly, whereas soft skills – being transferable across contexts – retain their value, enhancing professional longevity and resilience (Schultheiss and Backes-Gellner, 2023).

This trend is also well documented in quantitative studies, particularly through the analysis of OJA data as a primary source of labour market intelligence. OJA data offer real-time insights into the specific contours of skill demand (Napierala and Kvetan, 2023), revealing a consistent and growing requirement for soft skills across diverse sectors (Fernández-Macías and Sostero, 2024). As synthesised in Table 2, international analyses of OJA data consistently identify communication, teamwork and problem-solving as the most frequently requested skills.

This trend is exemplified in the Spanish context (Figure 1), where over 70% of 7 million job postings (2018–2023) required soft skills (Pagés et al., 2024).

To comprehend the value attributed to soft skills in a dynamic labour market, we situate them within the broader dynamics of technological adaptation, specifically the acceleration of the digital transformation of society. From an economic perspective, as technological augmentation accelerates, creative destruction (Schumpeter, 1942; Acemoglu and Restrepo, 2019) can erode the value of existing technical knowledge (Jones and Newman, 1995). Consequently, individuals and organisations must continuously adapt to new technologies, a demanding and resource-intensive process.

Jones and Newman (1995) conceptualise this continuous learning process as an investment in adaptive capital – the informational and cognitive resources essential for individuals and organisations to adapt to new technologies. However, this adaptive capital is not inherently durable; rather, its depletion through technological shocks demonstrates a fundamental conflict between rapid technical progress and efficient adaptation.

Recent frameworks posit that soft skills can provide the sustainable infrastructure for lifelong employability in contexts of accelerating change (Bisschoff and Massyn, 2025). Furthermore, soft skills can help to reduce cost to organisations. Deming (2017) argues that social skills reduce “coordination costs,” thereby facilitating the “trading of tasks” and efficient collaboration. In this model, social skills act as a multiplier for cognitive skills: the ability to navigate complex social environments becomes most valuable when tasks are non-routine, unpredictable and require high levels of interdependence. Thus, these skills are positioned as a mechanism that lowers the friction of adaptation in team-based environments.

Complementing this macroeconomic view is the micro-level perspective of CCT, which frames vocational development as a dynamic process of adaptation to the environment (Savickas, 2021). This approach, articulated as the “Life Designing” paradigm, was formulated to address the critical challenges posed by unpredictable job markets and the new social arrangements of work in the 21st century. Life Designing refers to a framework for career interventions that utilise narrative processes to support individuals in constructing their evolving career stories within a shifting social context (Savickas, 2021).

The perspective shifts the focus from choosing a fixed occupation to a continuous, holistic construction of one’s life trajectory, including their work career (Savickas et al., 2009). This focus on individual narrative construction is highly consistent with the Protean (Hall, 2004) and Boundaryless career (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996) approaches, which reflect a paradigm transformation: responsibility for professional development shifts from the organisation to the individual, with individuals taking greater responsibility for managing their skills, identity and employability. Within this shifting landscape, the Sustainable Careers Model further enriches the framework by integrating well-being and environmental conditions as dynamic factors that interact over time (Akkermans and Kubasch, 2017), thereby situating professional adaptability within a broader context of structural transformations and lifelong sustainability.

To operationalise this adaptive process, the CCMA posits that successful adaptation is achieved through a sequence: adaptive readiness (willingness to change) leads to the deployment of adaptability resources, which inform adapting responses, ultimately resulting in adaptation results (Savickas, 2021). This dynamic is substantiated by robust meta-analytic evidence indicating that adaptability resources are far more than theoretical constructs; they are significant predictors of objective (employability status) and subjective (career satisfaction) adaptation outcomes (Rudolph et al., 2017).

For the purposes of this study, soft skills are defined as the durable psychosocial resources – specifically a tripartite set of personal, interpersonal, and reasoning skills (Haselberger et al., 2012) – that underpin an individual’s adaptive readiness and career adaptability. The characterisation of soft skills as durable-adaptive capital extends the conventional conceptualisation of adaptive capital, positioning them as the psychosocial infrastructure that can drive the adaptability resources identified by Savickas (2021) as the “4Cs”. Soft skills can facilitate the enactment of: Concern (planning for the future), Control (taking responsibility for one’s career), Curiosity (exploring vocational possibilities) and Confidence (the self-efficacy to overcome challenges). Consequently, we propose that soft skills can be theoretically understood as market signals for durable-adaptive capital. By providing the psychosocial infrastructure essential for career adaptability, these skills can act as the primary engine for continuous career construction throughout the lifespan.

The study was conducted by the Skills Intelligence Unit at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), an online higher education institution based in Catalonia, Spain. This article derives from research undertaken as part of an initiative aimed at providing professional guidance and labour market analysis services to active workers in Catalonia. Its goal is to support individuals in adapting to shifts in productive sectors and workplace dynamics. Ethical approval for the study was granted by the UOC Ethics Committee (Ref. no. CE23-PR11).

In total, 42 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted from May to November 2023 through Blackboard Collaborate, with industry representatives (see Table 3) who had previously signed an informed consent. The study focused on the analysis of professional profiles related to Information Technology (IT), Commerce and Marketing (CM) and Administration and Management (AM). These areas represent key Catalan industries due to the high concentration of in-demand professional occupations in Catalonia (López et al., 2025).

A mix of purposeful, convenience, snowball and criterion sampling was used to identify and capture interview participants. Selection was based on the researcher’s judgment (Babbie, 2020), with the purpose of obtaining interviewees rich in information about the phenomenon (Mcmillan and Schumacher, 2010). Specifically, industry representatives were invited to participate for their sectoral expertise and professional profiles; a key criterion was their profound knowledge of their respective domains, including recruitment processes, in-demand skills and professional development, consistent with the purposive sampling objective of selecting information-rich cases for in-depth insight (Patton, 1990).

Qualitative sampling followed a series of recruitment strategies aiming to access selected populations. Firstly, a core approach was to utilise professional and personal connections using a virtual snowball sampling method and desk research, through LinkedIn as a sampling source (Dicce and Ewers, 2021). Secondly, various ways of recruiting have been activated through different areas of the Online Higher Education Institution. Thirdly, a specific LinkedIn recruitment technique was employed, capitalising on its proven utility for sampling and identifying potential interviewees (Dicce and Ewers, 2021) by searching for suitable professionals within the study population and inviting them to participate. The process concluded once a reasonable level of data saturation was reached, meaning that no new relevant information emerged and responses became increasingly redundant (Ballestín and Fàbregues, 2018).

Interview recordings underwent transcription and translation, and then thematic analysis was conducted. Thematic analysis serves as a data reduction strategy, involving the segmentation, categorisation, summarisation and reconstruction of qualitative data to capture essential concepts and organise them into themes (Fàbregues et al., 2016; Given, 2008). This qualitative methodology was applied to acquire meaning rather than measurement (Merriam and Tisdell, 2016).

Following the thematic analysis framework of Boyatzis (1998), data were processed through systematic code development to ensure a rigorous approach to analysis. In the first part of the process, the research team developed a set of codes based on keywords or phrases that reflect features of the data related to skills’ definitions, based on ESCO ontology (European Commission, 2022b), understanding soft skills as non-technical personal and interpersonal skills (Haselberger et al., 2012).

After coding, the analysis of themes began by uncovering recurring patterns across the dataset, which were grouped around central organising concepts, addressing the “what” and “why” behind the codes (Boyatzis, 1998). A structured approach was used to delve deeper into insights, interpretations and inferences, blending a hybrid analytical method that incorporated both theory-driven (deductive) and data-driven (inductive) thematic development (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane, 2006). Theory-driven coding was based on economic perspectives on soft skills (EP) and vocational psychological framework (CCT) to identify the underlying mechanisms that explain its value and role. The frameworks were integrated through qualitative analysis and thematic coding that applied economic concepts (e.g. adaptive capital and coordination costs) alongside vocational psychology constructs (e.g. adaptability stages and career adaptability resources) in parallel. This dual-lens approach ensured that the coding process systematically captured the macro-level economic utility framing for organisations alongside the micro-level psychosocial framing for those processes associated with an individual’s adaptation, both of which help to understand the contemporary demand for soft skills.

The researchers collaboratively conducted the coding and theme analysis process through ATLAS.ti 24. To ensure rigour, reliability and transparency, the analytical approach employed throughout the process was designed to apply a systematic and verifiable method to qualitative analysis. Additionally, researcher triangulation (Twining et al., 2017) was carried out, involving weekly meetings with all the research team over a four-month period to discuss and refine the use of codes and the development of themes.

Table 4 summarises the findings, presenting four overarching themes and seven interrelated sub-themes that directly address the research questions exploring how economic perspectives and vocational psychology frameworks can articulate the perceived value and increasing demand for soft skills in evolving labour markets. Including information on the frequency of mentions relative to the total number of respondents in each professional group (IT, CM, and AM).

The perceived value of intrapersonal self-management skills is driven by the necessity of adapting organisational processes to continuous environmental shifts, particularly those stemming from technological acceleration. Theme 1 encompasses two findings: Insight 1, which identifies adaptability, flexibility and learn-to-learn ability as key for incorporating technological changes; and Insight 2, which stresses the value of adaptable and proactive profiles in response to wider social and cultural changes. Participants expressed a preference for workers capable of rapid adaptation to prevent knowledge obsolescence:

This value is further underscored by the need for internal learning to outpace external environmental shifts. This dynamic was described through the lens of organisational survival:

Furthermore, the findings suggest that industry representatives value curiosity and the proactive pursuit of knowledge as a means of navigating future uncertainty (Insight 2). This is illustrated by the following participant account:

The industry’s concern with speed and resilience also suggests that this psychosocial resource is valued for overcoming the inevitable challenges and frustrations encountered during rapid learning and transition. Furthermore, adaptation extends beyond technical shifts (Insight 1) to cultural and strategic changes (Insight 2), necessitating flexible integration:

The increasing prevalence of interconnected processes rises the importance of social and communication skills. Theme 2 encompasses two primary findings: Insight 3, which focuses on how teamwork and collaboration promote a holistic approach to organisational processes; and Insight 4, which highlights the role of communication skills in facilitating interaction between diverse professional profiles.

Even for professionals who traditionally work towards individual objectives, teamwork is recognised as a highly valued skill (Insight 3). Social skills are perceived as a mechanism that facilitate that specialised workers can effectively exchange tasks, thereby maximising team output and efficiency:

This emphasis on effective collaboration promotes what an industry representative named “individual T-shapes”, referring to professionals with deep specialisation but also with transversal social skills needed for effective team cohesion. Moreover, the value placed on effective communication (Insight 4) is acknowledged as crucial for improving matching efficiency. The capacity to simplify complex concepts and convey messages clearly is perceived as essential for interactions between technical and non-technical stakeholders, enabling effective decision-making. These communication skills, particularly the ability to build client trust and facilitate decision-making, are seen as a highly valuable skill set that is “very hard to replace”.

Industry representatives emphasise attributes that distinguish soft skills from technical skills. The first attribute (Attribute 1) relates to the perception that soft skills are, as an industry representative stated, “much more challenging to acquire and develop”. Unlike hard skills, the adaptive capacity inherent in the individual is deemed less susceptible to immediate obsolescence from technological shocks. As mentioned by an industry representative:

The second attribute (Attribute 2) concerns the perceived capacity of soft skills to compensate for a lack of formal experience or specific technical qualifications. As an industry representative stated, “with a junior profile, you have to value other things.” This highlights their function as complements to cognitive skills. Social skills are relatively more valuable when overall worker productivity is high, as the individual has more output of value to “trade”. In practice, soft skills are perceived as a means to facilitate the assessment of latent potential or employability attributes, rather than focusing solely on immediate skill proficiencies:

A similar situation occurs in organisations that prioritise the search for “talent”, where soft skills are linked to an individual’s potential to add value. In these cases, such profiles are given higher value due to their ability to enhance organisational survival in increasingly competitive environments.

Soft skills are often viewed as determinants of job performance and predictors of organisational fit. This association with professional success (Attribute 3) suggests that personal and interpersonal competencies are viewed as essential for achieving long-term stability within a role. Furthermore, the function of soft skills is frequently emphasised in terms of cultural integration and alignment with company values:

In this sense, soft skills could be determinant of employability, because their absence are often perceived as critical “red flags” in hiring processes, making a candidate unsuitable for even initial consideration.

This study employed a qualitative methodology to explain the value and attributes driving the increasing demand for soft skills, articulating industry perspectives with economic and vocational psychological framings. We aimed to uncover the dynamics by which soft skills function as durable-adaptive capital for organisations and strengthen career construction for individuals. The analysis delineates how employers perceive soft skills not merely as desirable traits, but as critical mechanisms of durable-adaptive capital within evolving labour markets.

In response to RQ1, the analysis revealed two primary avenues of perceived value. Firstly, Theme 1 shows the crucial role of intrapersonal self-management skills in maintaining organisational competitiveness. From an economic perspective, the proactive updating of knowledge (Insight 1) is directly linked with the concept of durable-adaptive capital investment required to mitigate the depreciation of technical skills in a dynamic market characterised by Schumpeterian creative destruction.

At the individual level, these industry requirements can mobilise adaptability resources. The necessity to navigate continuous technological shifts drives the activation of career concern, manifesting as a future-oriented awareness of the need to prepare for imminent transitions. This is operationalised through career control, where the valuation of proactive profiles (Insight 2) encourages individuals to assume responsibility for their own upskilling, and career curiosity, which drives the “learn-to-learn” behaviours required to explore and assimilate new technology, consistent with self-directed and mobile career models (Hall, 2004; Arthur and Rousseu, 1996).

These findings, while grounded in the Catalan labour market, are consistent with skills trends identified in other advanced economies, particularly those highlighted in the World Economic Forum’s (2025) Future of Jobs report. This report identifies priority skills clusters for workforce development by 2030, further emphasising the continued relevance of human-centric soft skills. While these findings offer significant generalisability, their application across different territories must remain sensitive to local dynamics; in the Global South, for instance, outcomes are often mediated by structural factors such as an unequal labour market and limited opportunity (McGrath and Yamada, 2023).

Secondly, Theme 2 highlighted the role of interpersonal social and communication skills in enhancing organisational processes within interconnected and diverse settings. This finding strongly aligns with Deming’s (2017) perspective, positioning social skills as a mechanism that reduces coordination costs and facilitates efficient “task trade” (Insight 3). Within the CCT framework, social skills support adaptive responses by reducing coordination frictions in complex, evolving environments. The value placed on clear communication between technical and non-technical stakeholders (Insight 4) further exemplifies the need for targeted adaptive responses that facilitates collaborative decision-making, ensuring “matching efficiency” (Deming, 2017).

Addressing RQ2, the study identified specific attributes that render soft skills highly valued. The perception that soft skills are “difficult to acquire and develop” (Attribute 1) establishes their distinct economic value: scarcity and durability. Unlike technical skills, which are perceived as rapidly acquirable, soft skills are considered less susceptible to immediate obsolescence, reinforcing their function as durable-adaptive capital. Furthermore, the perceived capacity of soft skills to mitigate gaps in experience or specific qualifications (Attribute 2) highlights their complementarity to cognitive skills. From a psychosocial perspective, this attribute is directly underpinned by the resource of career confidence. In early-career profiles, soft skills can strengthen self-efficacy – the confidence to act effectively despite limited experience – reducing the hesitation that often prevents individuals from stepping into new roles. These insights also align with employability frameworks that emphasise assessing potential attributes rather than solely on immediate skill proficiencies (Bisschoff and Massyn, 2025). In situations involving junior profiles or talent acquisition, soft skills can signal the ability to “add value” and drive organisational survival.

Finally, the association of soft skills with role performance and cultural integration (Theme 4 – Attribute 3) signals the role of these skills as predictors of adaptation results. Soft skills are viewed as crucial signals of success, satisfaction and stability in the workplace (aligning with Bisschoff and Massyn, 2025). Acquiring these attributes facilitates competency development and ensures alignment with corporate values, essential for passing selection processes and integration. This validates the CCMA sequence, where soft skills function as market signals for the entire adaptation process.

1. Implications for individuals’ adaptability and career construction across the lifespan

   In today’s uncertain and dynamic labour market, individuals have a responsibility towards lifelong learning as a way of renewing human capital and contributing to a skilled workforce through proactive career construction. Notably, the results of the current study exhibit that flexibility and learn-ability can serve as foundational elements for lifelong career adaptability. This process is consistent with the Sustainable Careers Model (Akkermans and Kubasch, 2017), which emphasises professional development as a continuous, holistic construction of life trajectories. Moreover, curiosity not only facilitates skill acquisition but also enhances the capacity for unlearning outdated practices, which is crucial in technologically transformative industries where “rapid and ongoing change requires continuous attention to skill development in a way that many workers are not prepared for currently” (Behrend et al., 2024, p. 2).

2. Implications for educational institutions and their continuous education strategies

   Educational institutions play a critical role in fostering career development through strategies that help lifelong learners adapt to changing labour market dynamics. The results of this study indicate the need for soft skills’ acquisition to strengthen an individual’s ongoing adaptation to changes in the labour market and enhance their employability. Importantly, micro-credentialing has been emphasised as a viable solution for bridging the soft skills gap in the workforce (Bruguera et al., 2024), particularly for non-traditional adult learners. Online microcredentials for in-demand soft skills, which feature co-design practices with industry leaders (Zeivots and Shalavin, 2024), agile continuous education approaches (Peters et al., 2022), connected learning designs (Peters et al., 2024), and work-integrated learning (Ferns et al., 2024), are promising paradigms that could inform workforce development strategies by focusing on authentic, work-focused experiences as an intentional element of a soft skills curriculum for workforce development.

3. Implications for novel forms of career guidance and workforce development initiatives

   Career guidance services must continue evolving to address the complexities of career transformations across the lifespan. CCT and CCMA offer a robust framework for helping individuals make sense of their career trajectories in an uncertain world. By emphasising the human-centric role of soft skills’ development amid rapid technological development, career guidance can empower individuals to manage their careers proactively, potentially contributing to reducing social inequalities and improving working-life quality. This approach to career construction involves moving beyond traditional placement models to more developmental and self-directed approaches where career development is seen as an interplay between individual agency and social expectations, articulated through a sequence of adaptive readiness, resources, responses and results (Rudolph et al., 2017). A paradigm of career construction as adaptation integrates adaptability and durability into every stage of the lifespan, essential for navigating career uncertainty (Savickas, 2021).

Firstly, a key constrain arises from the conceptual heterogeneity of soft skills. Qualitative studies are valuable for understanding nuanced perspectives, but remain subject to inherent and subjective differences in concepts influenced by conceptual and experiential frameworks. To mitigate this bias, this study implemented a rigorous process of coding and analysis. Secondly, while our sample encompasses a range of industries, it does not cover all economic sectors, which may introduce sample bias and affect representativeness. The underrepresentation of certain industries, demographic groups and smaller organisational sizes may have led to incomplete insights. This limitation was transparently addressed by incorporating the percentage of mentions relative to the total number of respondents within the thematic analysis, thereby offering a more nuanced understanding of the priorities across the areas examined. Future research could expand the sample to enhance generalisability and reduce sample bias. Moreover, a mixed-methods approach would provide a richer, multi-dimensional analysis of the phenomenon.

This research employed a qualitative methodology to identify and analyse the dynamics driving the demand for soft skills within the contemporary labour market, addressing the limitations of purely quantitative labour market intelligence and utilising a novel integrated conceptual framing. Our findings suggest soft skills hold a critical socio-economic function. Intrapersonal self-management skills are chiefly valued for mitigating adaptive capital depreciation amid rapid technological advances, thereby sustaining organisational competitiveness. Conversely, interpersonal skills make collaboration more efficient by lowering the time and effort required to coordinate work (i.e. coordination costs) and enabling smoother task handoffs (i.e. task trade efficiency) in interdependent settings. The market demand is further sustained by the perception that soft skills are challenging to acquire – solidifying their durability and scarcity – and function as crucial predictors of adaptation results and successful cultural integration.

Furthermore, by aligning industry insights with the CCMA, this study illustrates how soft skills operate within a broader adaptive sequence. The changing contexts of work require individuals to evidence adaptive readiness – that is, a willingness to respond to evolving “soft skill” requirements. They then mobilise career adaptability resources – concern, control, curiosity and confidence – to regulate and direct their responses. These psychosocial resources are enacted through adaptive behaviours, such as effective communication, collaborative task-trading and flexible problem-solving, which culminate in measurable adaptation outcomes, including organisational fit, performance and career success. In this way, soft skills both reflect and enable the process of career adaptation in contemporary labour markets. The article’s central, evidence-driven contribution lies in providing a novel, integrated framework that explicitly links the economic imperatives of adaptive capital to the psychosocial resources required for a career construction model of adaptation. This convergence positions soft skills as a fundamental infrastructure for lifelong employability, work adjustment and career construction across the lifespan.