Soft skills, or EI are teachable skills.  That puts an onus on workers to try to learn these skills but also on employers to offer education and training.  Saying you should hire someone with these skills is all very well and good.  When you find a shortage of candidates with these skills, and the hard skills needed for the position, what should an employer do?  My recommendation is hire the most technically-able / intelligent candidate that has the hard-skills you need and make learning those soft-skills a condition of continued employment and of periodic (more than annual) evaluations.  As long as that new employee is willing to learn, and can accept they have a skills gap to be filled, this is a win-win for both employer and employee.