As employers refine how they evaluate frontline talent, a new study from HiringBranch challenges the common practice of reporting soft skills like empathy and active listening as separate scores. The research, discussed on the latest episode of the podcast "You Should Know," suggests that this approach may actually weaken hiring predictions for roles involving direct customer interaction.
Assaf Bar-Moshe, Chief of Research and Development Officer at HiringBranch, joined host William Tincup to discuss the findings. The episode, titled "Assessing Skills One at a Time Is Costing You Better Hires," was published on August 26, 2026. HiringBranch, a Montreal-based assessment company, uses open-ended voice and writing assessments to evaluate candidates. The study found that single-skill scoring shows only moderate correlation with human annotators, while a combined proprietary model yields much stronger correlations.
Bar-Moshe explained that HiringBranch measures four key pillars of customer service: acknowledgment, reassurance through positive language, empathy, and active listening. However, he emphasized that evaluating these skills individually may not capture how they work together in real-world interactions. "If a candidate can express empathy, but is unable to solve the issue correctly or to comprehend the issue correctly or to reassure the customer, then this empathy is nice, but it's actually useless," Bar-Moshe said.
The research is grounded in specific customer-facing scenarios, such as a retail confrontation over mispriced broccoli that turned on diplomacy rather than policy. HiringBranch takes a linguistic approach, using "sociopragmatic analysis of the words that the candidate is actually saying," rather than personality-based assessments. The company's team of IO psychologists and linguists uses years of textual data to build machine learning models that predict these skills, and they validate the predictions against on-the-job performance months after hire.
Calibrations vary by client, industry, and geography, with different scoring weights for the same role across markets like Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. Bar-Moshe also previewed a self-serve capability in development that would allow hiring managers to build assessments from a library of conversation flows and skills, reducing reliance on weak or generic job descriptions. The full study will be available under the AI research tab on the HiringBranch website.
The episode is part of the "You Should Know" podcast, produced by the WRKdefined Podcast Network, and is available on major podcast platforms. The show reaches more than 3.9 million verified listeners each month and covers workforce dynamics and the impact of technology on hiring. This research matters because it could change how companies assess and hire frontline workers, potentially leading to better hires and improved customer experiences.
