Soft Skills form the basis in which a person can effectively contribute to the success of an organization.
The need for soft skills has never been more important. Increasingly sought out by employers, in addition to standard qualifications, soft skills help build meaningful work relationships, influence others perception of you and your work, and motivate their actions.
Soft Skills in the Workplace
During the job application and interview process, employers look for applicants with two skill sets - hard skills and soft skills. It is essential you demonstrate a strong ability of both.
In the world of work, “hard skills” are made up of knowledge in technical or administrative procedures, financial administration or computer literacy. These skills are typically easy to observe, quantify and measure. They are relatively easy to train, since most of the time the skill sets are not new to the learner and no adapting is required.
However, all jobs demand a strong set of soft skills to function alongside the necessary specific hard skills. Accountants and lawyers use a set of rules and laws which form their hard skills and compliment them with the ability to sell themselves to clients and communicate the information effectively to them.
While certain hard skills are necessary for any position, employers are increasingly searching for job applicants with soft skills too. This is because it is easy for an employer to train a new employee in a particular hard skill (e.g. how to use a particular computer program), but it is much more difficult to train an employee in a soft skill such as communicating effectively.
Due to the increased competition amongst candidates, companies have the luxury of picking who they want, with vast CV’s to choose from, human resources are looking for the highest qualified candidate, and just promoting hard skills on your CV is no longer enough. Soft skills not only make you stand out from the rest, but they are often compulsory skills highlighted in a job description.
So don’t just list your hard skills in your cover letter and on your resume, make sure you emphasise your soft skills too. Not only those associated to the application but also any extra skills you have and you will be the candidate that stands out!
Want to know more? Read our next article on WHAT SOFT SKILLS EMPLOYERS ARE LOOKING FOR?
Or find out how to identify soft skills in a job description with our article HOW TO BECOME A JOB DESCRIPTION DETECTIVE
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