Building the World’s First Soft Skills AI

Soft skills and their ability to be measured has never been more top of mind for employers. In the 2025 Lighthouse Talent Acquisition Trends Study as many 84% of employers said they’re adopting a skills-based hiring strategy or considering it. While so many are interested in a skills-first approach, many organizations are falling short on how they’re implementing it. 

Given that some high-volume recruiters are hiring as many as 8000 new employees per year, the need for technology that can measure soft skills for employers at scale has never been greater. HiringBranch, a company dedicated to measuring the skills of humans with technology, has built the world’s first Soft Skills AI™, and development of this powerful set of algorithms couldn’t come at a better time.

Building the Impossible

Soft skills are difficult to measure because there are so many and humans communicate them in so many different ways. How are employers supposed to get applicants to demonstrate those skills in a test that can be measured objectively? And how do employers match those skills to the success of a job consistently without raising their operating costs in the process?

Aligning recruitment and soft skills measurement is a difficult task. Using AI to measure soft skills may be even harder. Just this month, in February 2025, a UK-based startup publication wrote the following: 

“AI might be a smart way to skim-read hundreds of applications at once. It can certainly identify keywords that will demonstrate technical, hard skills, such as qualifications. However, AI tools may not yet be advanced enough to evaluate a job application to spot important, less tangible soft skills like communication, creativity, and adaptability. And these are the kinds of abilities that UK employers are increasingly prioritising.”

AI is only just emerging as an important tool for measuring soft skills objectively, at scale, and in a way that’s economically viable.

HiringBranch Launches the World’s First Soft Skills AI

It was only a few months ago that HiringBranch announced the launch of its Soft Skill AI to the world. "We want to unlock the power of soft skills in the workforce by measuring what used to be immeasurable," said HiringBranch CEO Stephane Rivard in a recent press release.

HiringBranch has a legacy of building technology for soft skill training. It was well positioned to build the first language model dedicated to soft skills after forming its data science team who perform statistical analyses, monitor quality assurance and AI decision-making. Today HiringBranch has officially launched its Soft Skills AI to the world, giving employers the unprecedented ability to measure soft skills at scale with up to 98% accuracy. So what exactly is it?

What is Soft Skills AI? 

Soft Skills AI is a dedicated collection of algorithms created by HiringBranch with the ability to accurately detect and measure human soft skills without intervention from a human evaluator. Soft Skills AI is the foundation layer behind HiringBranch’s conversational job simulations, used to assess the soft skills of candidates. The potential for this type of technology is immense. 

"Soft Skills AI is a dedicated collection of algorithms... with the ability to accurately detect and measure human soft skills without intervention from a human evaluator."

The Benefits of Measuring Soft Skills with AI

For candidates and enterprises to experience the benefits of skills-based hiring, they need leading AI providers like HiringBranch to unlock the power of accurate soft skill measurement at scale. Nina Ni, Associate at Crédit Mutuel Equity, explains:

"We have seen firsthand HiringBranch using AI for good, eliminating bias, and alleviating hiring managers of manual processes, like interviews, to work on higher value tasks. This is the true value of AI when executed responsibly."

Soft Skills AI is eliminating bias, CVs and even interviews in the hiring process, closing talent gaps for employers, and giving candidates standardized and equalized access to opportunities. Like our CEO said in a recent interview “we’re very proud of the fact that we’ve developed the first Soft Skills AI. Soft Skills AI is really a powerful tool for organizations. It really figures out what kind of candidates can drive success for your organization and help you meet your objectives.”

Hiring Market a Driving Force for Soft Skills AI 

Interviews are broken. Multiple choice assessments don’t work. Hiring problems, like turnover and attrition, continue in record numbers across contact centers and large enterprises. Governments and organizations worldwide are now turning their attention to skills instead, and with this shift comes promise for a better hiring market - both for the recruiters and the candidates. Recognizing skills as the leading criteria in a hiring decision is a dramatic improvement to the candidate and recruiter experience, and the technology to power this decision-making has the ability to reshape our world for the better. 

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Image Credits

Feature Image: Unsplash/Jonatan Pie

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