Hard and Soft Skills in Vocational Training: Experimental Evidence from Colombia

This paper studies the effects of an oversubscribed job-training program on skills and labor-market outcomes using both survey and administrative data. Overall, vocational training improves labor-market outcomes, particularly by increasing formal employment. A second round of randomization evaluates how applicants to otherwise similar job-training programs are affected by the extent that hard versus soft skills are emphasized in the curriculum. Admission to a vocational program that emphasizes technical relative to social skills generates greater short-term benefits, but these relative benefits quickly disappear, putting participants in the technical training on equal footing with their peers from the soft-skill training in under a year. Results from an additional randomization suggest that offering financial support for transportation and food increases the effectiveness of the program. The program fails to improve the soft skills or broader labor-market outcomes of women.