MBAs Have The People-Skills Edge. Employers Still Struggle To Measure It

While business schools rush to fold generative AI into every corner of the MBA – from admissions essays to case studies to capstones – a new survey suggests the more stubborn obstacle to landing a leadership-track job hasn’t moved much in years: It’s people skills, not AI skills.

And employers say they’re bad at measuring them.

The findings come from a survey of 500 U.S. hiring managers and business leaders, conducted on behalf of Eastern Washington University to inform marketing for its online MBA in Organizational Leadership – and they land in the middle of the discussion underway at business schools about where AI fits in management education.

THE PEOPLE PROBLEM AT THE TOP OF THE FUNNEL

At the center of the survey: 60% of employers say they’ve rejected an otherwise-qualified finalist because of weak people or communication skills, and 53% say they promoted someone in the past year primarily for people skills over technical ability. For leadership-track roles specifically, 79% say those human-centered competencies now outweigh small differences in AI or technical skill, an interesting number given how much attention B-schools have devoted to AI fluency over the past two years.

Elsewhere in the survey the same employers concede they’re not equipped to find these “human skills” before they hire. Seventy-five percent say soft skills are harder to evaluate reliably than technical ones, and 13% admit they don’t formally assess human-centered leadership skills at all during the hiring process. To their credit, 66% say they’re assessing these skills more rigorously than they were two years ago, and 23% say they’ve increased spending on soft-skill development in the past year.

WHERE THE MBA ADVANTAGE ACTUALLY LIVES

The survey’s most pointed finding for B-schools may be this: MBA graduates’ biggest edge over bachelor’s degree holders isn’t in AI or data skills but in exactly the human competencies employers say they can’t measure. 

MBA grads scored roughly 10 percentage points higher than bachelor’s grads across all evaluated competencies overall, a gap that explodes to 22 points in coaching and mentoring and 19 points in conflict resolution. The advantage is smaller but still notable in emotional intelligence (14 points), strategic thinking (11 points), adaptability under change (10 points), verbal or presentation communication (9 points), written communication (7 points) and ethical decision-making (7 points).

Compare that with AI collaboration and data literacy, the skills most associated with the AI arms race in business education, where MBA grads hold just a 2-point and 1-point edge, respectively, over bachelor’s grads. In other words, the MBA’s calling card with employers isn’t that it produces better AI users, it’s that it produces better coaches, communicators, and conflict-resolvers – the qualities employers say are both decisive and hardest to verify on a resume or in an interview.

WHAT ACTUALLY TIPS A LEADERSHIP HIRE

Asked what they’re prioritizing in leadership-track talent for 2026, employers put strategic thinking and adaptability under change at the top, each cited by 96%, followed closely by verbal or presentation communication (95%), ethical decision-making and conflict resolution (94% each) and emotional intelligence (93%). AI collaboration trails the pack at 63% – still a majority, but a distant one, and a hard number to square with any narrative that AI skill alone is becoming the deciding factor in who gets the corner office.

That ordering holds up when hiring managers describe what actually separates finalists for the same role. Strategic problem-solving and communication skills are tied at 48% as the top tiebreakers, ahead of adaptability under change and technical expertise or domain knowledge (37% each), years of experience (30%) and emotional intelligence (29%). 

Technical chops still matter – more than a third of hiring managers say they can be decisive – but they’re no longer the default tiebreaker the AI-in-MBA narrative might suggest.

THE MEASUREMENT GAP – AND WHO’S TRYING TO CLOSE IT

If human skills are this important, why are they so hard to assess? Structured behavioral interviews (37%), work samples, simulations or role plays (35%) and situational judgment tests (33%) are the most common tools hiring managers use to assess human-centered leadership skills, followed by standardized interview rubrics (30%) and case interviews (25%). Personality or psychometric assessments (24%) and assessment centers (16%) trail behind, and AI-assisted screening tools – the technology business schools have been racing to teach – sit at the bottom, used by just 15% of hiring managers for this purpose.

On the development side, hiring managers rate old-fashioned, high-touch pathways as most effective for building these skills: internal mentoring and coaching (89%), on-the-job stretch assignments (85%), employer-run leadership programs and in-person MBA programs (83% each), and rotations or externships (81%). Online MBA programs land further down the list at 68%, just ahead of self-directed learning such as books or podcasts (66%) and short online courses or certificates (63%). 

Inside companies, training dollars for entry-level hires still go mostly toward time management and prioritization (41%) and client or customer communication (38%), with AI tool use and prompting basics tied for last at 16%, on par with ethical reasoning training and just ahead of public speaking (15%).

Monique Black, a lecturer and graduate programs director at the Schools of Business and Professional Accounting at Eastern Washington University, says the data point to a mismatch between where business schools are investing and where employers say the real return is. 

“The striking part of this data is that soft skills now matter more than marginal differences in AI ability for promotable talent,” Black says. “This is important for MBA programs racing to staple AI onto every course. If schools want stronger employment outcomes, they must start measuring people skills with the same rigor they apply to analytics, strategy, or tech.”

DON’T MISS POETS&QUANTS’ 2026 BEST MBA PROGRAMS FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP

© Copyright 2026 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.