All across America, students are anxiously finishing their “What I Want To Be …” college application essays, advised to focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) by experts and parents who insist that’s the only way to become workforce ready. But two recent studies of workplace success contradict the traditional wisdom about “hard skills”.

Google originally set its hiring systems to sort for computer science students with top grades from top science universities. In 2013, Google decided to test its hiring theory by quickly dealing with large amounts hiring, firing, and promotion data collected since the company’s establishment.

Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM capability comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing comprehension into others; being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas.

Those characteristics sound more like what one gains as an English or theater major than as a programmer. Could it be that top Google employees were succeeding despite their technical training, not because of it? After bringing in more experts to dive even deeper into the data, the company enlarged its previous hiring practices to include humanities majors, artists, and even the MBAs (Master of Business Administration).

Project Aristotle, a study released by Google this past spring, further supports the importance of soft skills even in high-tech environments. Project Aristotle analyzes data on inventive and productive teams. Google takes pride in its A-teams, assembled with top scientists, each with the most specialized knowledge and able to throw down one creative idea after another. Its data analysis revealed, however, that the company’s most important and productive new ideas come from B-teams comprised of employees who don’t always have to be the smartest people in the room.

Project Aristotle shows that the best teams at Google exhibit a range of soft skills: equality, generosity, curiosity toward the ideas of your teammates, understanding, and emotional intelligence. And topping the list: emotional safety. To succeed, each and every team member must feel confident speaking up and making mistakes. They must know they are being heard.

STEM skills are vital to the world we live in today, but technology alone, as Steve Jobs famously insisted, is not enough. We desperately need those who are educated to the human, cultural, and social as well as the computational.

Faison worked in the state of Florida as a lawyer for large companies until 2012, when he moved to Virginia to start a farm business. But now, instead of raising crops, he is raising the earnings of local farmers.

Faison seems at ease with life on a farm. Members of his family have been farming for many years. When his grandparents died, he and his brothers and sisters inherited their farm. He says that began the process of trying to decide what they were going to do with it.

Four years ago, Faison left his job as a lawyer in Miami and returned to the family farm in Virginia. Slowly, he began to learn about the economic issues farmers face.

“A lot of small farmers are struggling. And they’re working very hard, but they’re not able to drive the income from farming to make it economically viable.”

Faison said he met with several farmers who raise animals naturally-in other words, they do not give them hormones (激素) or antibiotics (抗生素).

After the meetings, Faison created a company called Milton’s Local，named for his grandfather. Today, his work day is very different from his work as a lawyer.

Milton’s Local sells and transports all-natural meat from local farms to stores and restaurants. Faison says the company helps farmers increase their earnings, supports the local economy and satisfies the buyers of these meat products.

Milton’s Local products have been sold at the Arlington store for more than a yean People like the products, not just because they are natural but because they come from local farms.

That is good news for James Faison. He now works with more than 30 small farms in Virginia and North Carolina. He hopes Milton’s Local will expand，become more profitable and help more small farmers.

Too much work, too little money and not enough opportunity for promotion, .or growth are stressing us out on the job, according to a new survey from the American Psychological Association.

We all know that stress reduces all of the things that help productivity— mental clarity (清晰), short-term memory, decision-making and moods. One-third of employees experience lasting stress related to work, the survey found. Fifty-four percent of the 1,501 employed adults surveyed say they feel they are paid too little for their contributions, and 61% said their jobs don’t offer adequate opportunities to advance. Only half of the adults surveyed said they feel valued at work.

Besides, women’s stress is rising as families rely more on women’s earnings. An employed wife’s contribution to family earnings has reached, on average, 47% since 2009, so women feel especially stuck and tense. Thirty-two percent of women said their employers don’t provide sufficient opportunities for internal advancement, compared with 30% of men. Women are more likely to feel tense during a typical workday, reporting more often that their employer doesn’t appreciate what they do.

Physically, the body responds to stress by secreting hormones into the bloodstream that stimulate accelerated (加速的) heart rate and breathing and tensing of muscles. People who experience stress as a positive often have increased blood flow to the brain, muscles and limbs, similar to the effects of aerobic exercise. Those who feel frightened or threatened, however, often have an unstable heart rate and constricting wood vessels (血管). Their blood pressure rises and hands and feet may grow cold. They may become agitated, speak more loudly or experience errors in judgment.

Emotional responses to stress often divide along gender lines, with men more likely to have a “fight or flight” reaction while women are more likely to have a tend and befriend” response, seeking comfort in relationships and care of loved ones, according to the research.

Women tend to “internalize”, which contributes to their stress. Many women hesitate to speak up for themselves or challenge behavior they see as unfair. Kay Keaney, interior designer, 40, rose fast at a California medical group, taking on responsibility for interior and facility planning. With her 60-hour workweeks, plus early-morning and late-night meetings and a 1.5-hour commute each way, she seldom had time with her two small children. Whether stuck in traffic on her way to a 6 p.m. pickup at day care, or tom between her children and urgent work emails, “I just wanted to crawl out of my skin,” she says. “I was overwhelmed.” Yet she hesitated to complain. “There was too much work to be done, and playing the Mommy card was bad form.” But the experts suggest that women should give themselves a voice.