CAT 2023 Slot 3 — VARC Question 20
Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
1. Although hard skills have traditionally ruled the roost, some companies are moving away from choosing prospective hires based on technical abilities alone.
2. Companies are shaking off the old definition of an ideal candidate and ditching the idea of looking for the singularly perfect candidate altogether.
3. Now, some job descriptions are frequently asking for candidates to demonstrate soft skills, such as leadership or teamwork.
4. That’s not to say that practical know-how is no longer required – some jobs still call for highly specific expertise
5. The move towards prioritising soft skills “is a natural response to three years of the pandemic” says a senior recruiter at Cenlar FSB.
Answer & solution
Answer: 2
Easy
Odd-sentence: locate the four lines that form one argument and discard the stray one. The unifying theme is the hiring shift from hard/technical skills to soft skills.
Sentence 1 sets it up: though hard skills traditionally ruled, some companies are moving away from hiring on technical ability alone.
Sentence 3 ("Now…") follows: job descriptions increasingly ask for soft skills like leadership or teamwork.
Sentence 4 qualifies it — practical know-how is still needed for some jobs — and sentence 5 explains the cause: the soft-skills move is a response to the pandemic. All three stay on the hard-vs-soft-skills thread.
Sentence 2 is about companies abandoning the idea of a "singularly perfect candidate" — a different point about the definition of an ideal candidate, not about the hard-to-soft skills shift. It is the odd one out.
2 — sentence 2 concerns the "perfect candidate" idea, off the soft-vs-hard-skills theme of the other four.