Voices from the Field: The Importance of Teamwork and Collaboration Skills

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We are told by business leaders that soft skills, like team work and collaboration, are very important. We believe that afterschool programs are especially equipped to teach these skills. In fact, we developed a briefing paper on the importance of teamwork and collaboration skills to prepare young people for the workforce. But we wanted to hear directly from business leaders, so we spoke to Kanita Fuller, a corporate recruiter, to learn more. 

Q: Would you describe your position?

Kanita Fuller

A: I am a full cycle, in-house Senior Business Recruiter at an AI start up in San Francisco called Perplexity. I interview and support candidates through the recruiting lifecycle for a variety of roles at the company, from accounting and finance to legal and sales and more. I recruit for a variety of levels as well, from entry-level (college grads with little to no experience) to Director+, each recruiting process can vary depending on the role/level/team. 

Q: How important are the soft skills of teamwork & collaboration to employers?

A: Very important, something every hiring manager looks for in their hiring process. 

Q: Do you look for them? Why? How?

A: No matter what role I recruit for, teamwork and collaboration are always skills that are at the forefront of our process. We often have a cross-functional partner on the interview panel so that we can learn if a candidate would be a good collaborator on projects with team members that may have different perspectives and opinions. Every role at the company has an element of working with one or more team members to get your job done, whether that is project-based, building or iterating on a process or helping to rebuild something that is broken, no job is ever a "solo" job. You will always have to work with others, so those skills are discussed throughout the process. We will ask questions in the interview process to make sure we believe a candidate's ability to work well with others is strong and a match for our company. We ask questions around their examples of working with a challenging partner, where there was friction, of working with a client or manager who they didn't agree with or there was a communication issue - and we ask how they overcome those challenges. Through their answers we can learn how they communicate, problem-solve and find a path forward in troubling or challenging scenarios.  

Q: What can afterschool programs do to help youth develop these skills?

A: Programs that are centered on team building, where participation from everyone is required, are important. Learning to listen to each other and understand that more minds are better than one to get a job done. This can be done in a variety of ways but would be best practiced in brainstorming and collaboration-based projects or work. Everyone has a different approach to coming up with ideas and executing and learning how to listen to each other. Learning how to move forward together is a great skill to learn. 

MORE ABOUT...

Kanita Fuller

Kanita Fuller is a seasoned talent acquisition professional and currently holds the title of Senior Business Recruiter at Perplexity AI. She has over 12 years of experience across corporate staffing. Her work spans recruiting for all functions of a business and aligning recruitment with growth initiatives in the tech and services sectors. She currently operates in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Perplexity AI, Inc. is an American privately held software company offering an AI-powered web answer engine designed for research and real-time fact-checking with cited sources. It processes user queries and synthesizes clear, conversational responses using large language models and real-time web search. Perplexity provides answers based on current internet content with embedded citations, and is available as a free public product with a paid Pro subscription that unlocks more advanced models and features.

Measuring Soft Skills in OST Programs: An Interview with Nicole Yohalem, Part 2

By Sam Piha

The Learning in Afterschool project is promoting five learning principles that are well rooted in education and youth development research. Teachers and youth workers alike know that these principles are important to engaging young people in learning. Although these principles are vital to developing important skills, sometimes referred to as 21^st century skills, many refer to them as “soft”. Further, the lack of accessible tools that measure these skills has been a problem for the OST field. 

Recently the Forum for Youth Investment published From Soft Skills to Hard Data: Measuring Youth Program Outcomes, which offers a survey of measurement instruments that measure many of these skills. They include:

Nicole Yohalem

•      Communication
•      Relationships & Collaboration
•      Critical Thinking & Decision-making
•      Initiative & Self-direction

Below, we interview Nicole Yohalem (Forum for Youth Investment) one of the co-authors of this report.

Q: What criteria did you use in selecting instruments?

A: We considered several factors. First we looked for measures where a majority of the contents mapped directly onto one of our four areas of interest. We looked for measures that were appropriate for use in a range of settings, including OST programs, and focused on tools that can be used with upper elementary through high school age youth, since a lot of useful work has already been done by CASEL to review measures for use with younger children. We also prioritized measures that are accessible to practitioners and relatively easy to use. Because we are committed to ensuring practitioners have access to tools that yield reliable (consistent) and valid information, we also looked for instruments that at a minimum, had been investigated for scale reliability, factor structure and sensitivity to OST program impact. 

Q: How might the guide be helpful for OST programs?

A: In selecting measures there are some important things for program leaders to consider. First and foremost, outcome measures should reflect the goals and activities of the program. Programs should measure outcomes that they value and that they are actively trying to influence. Second, it is important to select measures that will yield reliable and valid information. Finally, there are all the practical issues to consider – cost, ease of administration and accessibility. 

The guide includes information about all of these considerations. For each instrument we summarize the origins and focus on the tool, include sample items, and discuss user and technical considerations. Where possible we also include information about length, cost, format, supplemental tools, and training. Our technical reviews focus on the extent to which reliability and validity have been established. 

Q: Finally, do you see this new resource helping to address any important risks or opportunities facing the OST/afterschool movement at this time? 

A: Unfortunately we haven’t done a good job of coming to consensus on what to call important skills like critical thinking and decision-making, relationships and collaboration, communication and initiative and self-direction. I hear these referred to as social-emotional skills, soft skills, 21^st century skills, new basic skills, higher-order thinking, non-academic outcomes…the list goes on. 

If we could get more consistent about naming these and measuring them, programs will be more likely to identify them as target outcomes and demonstrate their ability to move the dial on these skills. At the policy level, we have historically under-invested in programs that are good at developing these skills. With the education and business sectors increasingly recognizing their value to school and workplace success, we have a unique window of opportunity to demonstrate the important role that afterschool programs play in supporting learning and development. 

________________________________________________________________

Nicole Yohalem

Director of Special Projects, The Forum for Youth Investment

Nicole oversees Forum projects on out-of-school time, postsecondary success and bridging research, policy and practice; speaks on behalf of the Forum at national conferences and events; and serves as an advisor to several foundations, organizations and initiatives connected to the Forum. She has authored numerous reports, articles and commentaries, and oversees several regular Forum publications, such as the Ready by 21, Credentialed by 26 issue brief series.

Measuring Soft Skills in OST Programs: An Interview with Nicole Yohalem, Part 1

By Sam Piha

The Learning in Afterschool project is promoting five learning principles that are well rooted in education and youth development research. Teachers and youth workers alike know that these principles are important to engaging young people in learning. Although these principles are vital to developing important skills, sometimes referred to as 21^st century skills, many refer to them as “soft”. Further, the lack of accessible tools that measure these skills has been a problem for the OST field. 

Recently the Forum for Youth Investment published From Soft Skills to Hard Data: Measuring Youth Program Outcomes, which offers a survey of measurement instruments that measure many of these skills. They include:

Nicole Yohalem

•      Communication
•      Relationships & Collaboration
•      Critical Thinking & Decision-making
•      Initiative & Self-direction

Below, we interview Nicole Yohalem (Forum for Youth Investment) one of the co-authors of this report.

Q: Of the many important skills, why did you focus on the four skill areas presented in your paper?

A: We didn’t want to create a new framework because there is so much good 

existing work out there.  So in identifying these four areas to focus on, we reviewed commonly used and cited frameworks from the Collaboration for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL); the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills; and the U.S. Department of Labor. We identified the common constructs across those frameworks, focusing specifically on skill-oriented outcomes and those that are amenable to intervention by afterschool programs. We also focused on skills that are cross-cutting, which means we left some things out that relate to specific content knowledge (e.g., technology, global awareness). That’s how we came to communication, relationships & collaboration, critical thinking & decision-making and initiative & self-direction. We aren’t suggesting this is a comprehensive list of important skills, or that these are the only skills afterschool programs should focus on. We may tackle additional areas in an updated report next year.

Q: Why are these “soft skills” deemed important?

A: There is growing evidence and recognition that these skills and dispositions are critical – to academic success, workplace success, and to overall wellbeing.  Teachers, students, parents and Fortune 500 companies all think these kinds of skills are critical. In a 2006 national survey of employers, collaboration, work ethic and communication were among the most important skills necessary to succeed in the workplace. On the academic side, focusing on social skills is linked with developing a positive connection to school, improved behavior, and increased achievement.

Q: What do you see as the role of OST programs to build these skills? In other words, why are OST programs well positioned to build these skills?

A: We feel these kinds of outcome areas could really be a strategic niche – in economic terms – a “comparative advantage” for many youth programs. Afterschool programs operate with limited resources yet have significant flexibility compared to schools. These are skills that youth programs are good at building and supporting, and they matter for learning and development.

Q: Why did you think it was important to identify instruments to measure these skills?

A: We know that high quality afterschool programs can help young people develop these and other skills, but to live up to this potential, activities need to align with outcomes and programs need tools that are accessible and that do a good job of measuring them. When you are tracking things like attendance, grades or standardized test scores, which many afterschool programs do, data are typically obtained from school records, which means program leaders and evaluators rarely face decisions about what instrument to use.

To be continued in Part 2

________________________________________________________________

Nicole Yohalem

Director of Special Projects, The Forum for Youth Investment

Nicole oversees Forum projects on out-of-school time, postsecondary success and bridging research, policy and practice; speaks on behalf of the Forum at national conferences and events; and serves as an advisor to several foundations, organizations and initiatives connected to the Forum. She has authored numerous reports, articles and commentaries, and oversees several regular Forum publications, such as the Ready by 21, Credentialed by 26 issue brief series.