If you're an empathetic person -- good at connecting with other people's feelings -- can that help you win prestigious jobs that pay $100,000 a year or more? Or will you be stuck at the low end of the pay scale, doing a lot to promote rapport and smooth out problems in your field, but never earning a big salary for your trouble?
Earlier in June I wrote a piece for LinkedIn Influencers, arguing that empathy will emerge as a "must-have" job skill by 2020.
The article attracted more than 890,000 readers, and lots of kind words. (Wow! -- and thanks.) In that piece, I cited lots of fast-growing, middle-tier careers where empathy matters, such as sports coaching, nursing and financial planning. But I didn't look at the empathy's relevance or irrelevance at the high end of the job market.
So let's go hunting for a six-figure job. We'll use indeed.com's vast database of current job listings, along with some simple filters. Specifically, we'll ask to see jobs that are likely to pay $100,000 a year or more, while calling for qualifications such as "empathy," "good listener," "emotional intelligence" or "rapport." The result: more than 2,000 listings. Scrub the data to eliminate double-counting, haphazardly estimated salaries and one company with Empathy in its name, and we're still left with perhaps 1,000 contenders.
What an intriguing list. Employers prizing empathy in these high-paying jobs stretch far beyond the predictable "compassion sector" organizations such as hospitals, clinics and foundations. They also include global heavyweights in the fiercely competitive worlds of tech, finance, consulting, aerospace and pharmaceuticals. Say hello to Microsoft, Dell, Symantec, Mars, Barclays Capital, McKinsey, Raytheon, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Pfizer and Abbott Laboratories.
Why do such employers care about empathy? Their job-ad language reflects what we all know -- but seldom put in writing. The fate of complex projects depends on a lot more than just getting the technical details right. Human buy-in is crucial, too. And the bigger the project, the more skill it takes to get everyone pulling in the same direction.
That's why Dell wants a program management consultant who can "manage difficult customer situations in a business manner with an emphasis on customer satisfaction." That's why Raytheon is hunting for someone who can "develop effective relationships with customers based on empathy and trust." That's why McKinsey is seeking people who "show empathy and leadership with clients and colleagues."
We're living in a world where better software and better algorithms are automating an ever-larger part of white-collar routines, even at the highest levels. But we still need people to step into the situations where -- to put it bluntly -- my team's algorithms don't mesh with your team's algorithms. In such situations the human touch is essential.
Of course, empathy alone isn't enough to prevail in senior management. Picking through the indeed.com database, it's easy to find 2,900 jobs that call for "results-oriented" candidates, and another 1,811 that ask for "bottom-line" skills. Being tough hasn't gone out of style yet, and it probably never will. But empathy is winning a seat at the table, too.
At a dinner this week, Eric Openshaw, head of Deloitte's U.S. technology, media and telecom practice, mentioned that 60% to 65% of white-collar productivity involves sorting out exceptions. That's a big number for situations where the routine rules aren't sufficient. Addressing that challenge calls for people who can use both their heads and hearts.
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