The ROI Of Confidence - Why Soft Skills Matter More Than You Think
A few months ago, we were talking to someone commissioning employment programmes. They were sceptical about our focus on confidence-building.
"I need people job-ready," they said. "I need them with skills employers want. Not just feeling better about themselves."
Fair point. We get it. When you're spending public money on training, you want tangible outcomes. Skills you can list on a CV. Qualifications. Things that sound concrete.
But here's what we've learned after ten years of doing this: technical skills alone don't get people jobs. Confidence does.
Or more accurately: technical skills plus confidence gets people jobs. Technical skills minus confidence just gets you someone who knows how to do something but won't apply for roles, freezes in interviews, or quits after two weeks because they don't believe they belong there.
That's a harder sell than "we'll teach them Excel." But it's true.
What Employers Say They Want (Then Struggle to Find)
Every employer survey says the same thing. The top skills they struggle to find aren't technical. They're:
Communication
Teamwork
Problem-solving
Reliability
Willingness to learn
Ability to take feedback
These are soft skills. Or employability skills. Or whatever we're calling them this year.
And before anyone says "well obviously, those are just basic expectations" - yes, they are. But loads of people don't have them. Or don't have the confidence to demonstrate them.
We've worked with people who are perfectly capable of working in a team, but in an interview they clam up and can't articulate an example. People who could solve problems, but don't believe they're "problem-solvers" so don't even apply for roles asking for that.
The technical skill isn't the blocker. The confidence to show they have it is.
Why Technical Skills Alone Aren't Enough
Here's a scenario we see fairly often. Someone's been unemployed for 18 months. They do an online course in digital marketing. They pass. They get a certificate. They understand SEO, social media, content marketing, all of it. Six months later, they're still unemployed. Why? Not because they didn't learn the skills. Because they didn't believe they were good enough to apply for jobs. Or they applied but couldn't articulate their value in interviews. Or they got a job but left after a fortnight because they felt like a fraud.
This isn't rare. This is common. The technical knowledge was there. The confidence to use it wasn't. We've also seen the opposite. Someone with basic skills but loads of confidence gets hired over someone with better qualifications but no self-belief. Happens all the time. Employers hire people they think will fit in, contribute, and stick around. Confidence signals all of that.
The Research
There's decent research on this, though we're not going to pretend it's all watertight.
Studies on job search behaviour show that confidence (or "self-efficacy" in research terms) predicts:
How many jobs people apply for
Whether they follow up on applications
How they perform in interviews
Whether they persist after rejection
People with higher confidence apply for more jobs, come across better in interviews, and keep going when they get knocked back. People with lower confidence apply for fewer roles (often below their capability), freeze in interviews, and give up quicker.
There's also research showing that long-term unemployment erodes confidence over time. The longer someone's out of work, the less they believe they're employable. Which makes them less employable, not because of skills but because of how they present.
It's a vicious circle. And skills training alone doesn't break it.
What Confidence Actually Looks Like in Practice
Let's be specific about what we mean by confidence, because it's not just "feeling good about yourself."
In an employment context, confidence means:
Believing you can learn new things - "I don't know this yet, but I can figure it out"
Believing you have something to offer - "I can contribute to this team/company"
Ability to articulate your value - Actually saying what you're good at without apologising
Resilience to rejection - Applying for another job after getting turned down
Willingness to try things you've not done before - Taking on tasks outside your comfort zone
These are all learnable. And they all affect whether someone gets and keeps a job.
Can You Actually Measure Confidence?
Yes, though not as neatly as you can measure "completed Excel module." There are validated frameworks for measuring self-efficacy and confidence. We use a simple one - nothing fancy, just a questionnaire before and after the programme asking people to rate statements like:
"I feel capable of learning new skills"
"I believe I could get a job in the next three months"
"I feel confident explaining what I'm good at"
"I would feel comfortable in a job interview"
People rate these on a scale. We compare before and after. It's not perfect, but it gives you a direction of travel.
We also track behavioural stuff:
How many jobs did someone apply for before vs after?
Did they attend an interview?
Did they actually take the job they were offered? (Some people get offers but turn them down because they don't believe they can do it)
These are proxy measures for confidence. Not perfect, but useful.
What We've Seen (When We're Allowed to Track It)
The tricky thing about measuring confidence is that sometimes the outcomes don't look like what you'd expect. Someone completes a digital skills programme and gets a job in retail. The digital skills weren't directly relevant to the role, but the experience of learning, working in a team, and finishing something built enough confidence to apply. Would that count as a success in your impact metrics? Depends how you measure it. Or someone learns the technical skills but takes six months before they actually apply for jobs. Not because they didn't learn, but because it took that long to believe they could do it. Or someone gets a job, leaves after two weeks because they feel like they don't belong, then gets another job three months later and stays. Was the programme a failure because they left the first job? Or a success because they eventually stuck at something?
This is why confidence is hard to measure. The outcomes are real, but they're messy and they don't always show up in neat three-month reports.
How We Build Confidence (Without It Being Touchy-Feely)
We don't do affirmations or motivational speeches. That's not what builds confidence. What does build it?
Completing something - Starting a project and finishing it. Sounds basic, but for people who've been unemployed for months or years, finishing things matters.
Working with others - Being part of a team, contributing ideas, seeing that your input helps. Real-world evidence that you can work with people.
Getting feedback from someone who isn't your mum - The charity we work with says "this is useful" or "this helped us." That's different from a tutor saying "well done." It's external validation.
Doing something you didn't think you could - Building a website when you thought you weren't technical. Presenting to a group when you thought you'd freeze. Proving to yourself you're more capable than you thought.
Having someone believe in you - Instructors who treat you like you're capable, not like you're broken. That matters more than people realise.
These aren't soft and fluffy. They're practical experiences that build evidence for yourself that you can do things.
What We're Not Saying
We're not saying technical skills don't matter. They do.
We're not saying everyone just needs a confidence boost and they'll be fine. Some people need other support - mental health, housing, addiction services. Confidence-building isn't a magic fix.
We're not claiming we can measure confidence perfectly. We can't.
And we're definitely not saying that every unemployed person lacks confidence. Some very confident people are unemployed for loads of reasons that have nothing to do with self-belief.
What we are saying is this, if you're commissioning skills training and only focusing on technical skills, you're missing half the picture.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Confidence-building is harder to sell than skills training.
"We'll teach them digital marketing" sounds concrete. Measurable. Clear.
"We'll help them believe they're capable" sounds woolly. Unmeasurable. Unclear.
But we keep seeing the same pattern: people with skills and no confidence don't get jobs. People with confidence and basic skills do.
So we can either keep commissioning programmes that look good on paper but don't change employment rates, or we can invest in programmes that address the actual barrier.
Which is often confidence, not capability.
If you're commissioning employment programmes and want to talk about how you measure what actually matters - not just what's easy to measure - we're happy to chat.
No hard sell. Just a conversation about what we've seen work and what we're still figuring out.
We focus on what actually gets people into work, which often isn't what you'd expect. Based in Reading, working with commissioners across the UK.