What Are Soft Skills? Everything You Need To Know
The above is a picture of a collage of words with the stand-out words being Soft Skills
What Are Soft Skills? Everything You Need To Know
According to a 2019 report, recruiters said that 89% of the time when an employee doesn't work out it's because of a lack of soft skills.
But if soft skills are so critical to success in jobs, why aren't they talked about as often as the more technical hard skills? In fact, many people don't even know what soft skills are.
If you're one of those people it's ok! In this post, we'll go over what soft skills are, the benefits of mastering them, and how to add skills to your CV.
Keep reading to learn more.
What Are Soft Skills?
Your hard skills are things such as specific technical knowledge, data analysis, computer skills, and industry experience. Whereas soft skills are less about what you know and more about your behaviors and how you work.
Soft skills include things such as interpersonal communication, time management, teamwork, critical listening, and problem-solving. These skills help companies to maintain a better work environment and to cut down on wasted time from distractions and miscommunications. They are highly valued by companies because it's harder to teach someone how to manage their time properly than to teach them how to do a specific job.
But that doesn't mean it's impossible to learn and improve your soft skills.
And doing that should definitely be a priority. You could be the best coder or analyst a company has, but if you don't know how to communicate and work with others on your team it will hold you back.
Benefits of Strong Soft Skills
Having a workforce of employees with strong soft skills benefits companies, but how can having soft skills benefit you personally? Here are some of the biggest benefits you can expect from improving your soft skills.
Increased Self-Confidence
Increased time management and communication skills especially can help you to feel more confident in your work, and in your personal life.
Being able to effectively communicate with those you care about can help you build stronger relationships and can help you feel like a better friend or family member. While better time management can help lower anxiety because you won't always have to rush to get things done last minute.
These things can help you feel better about yourself and increase your confidence.
Increased Productivity
When you develop your soft skills it can help you to be more productive at work, and at home.
Improving your active listening skills can help you to take directions better while also helping you know what questions to ask to be crystal clear. This means less time spent dealing with miscommunications and uncertainty.
In your home life, better time management and problem-solving skills can help you get the things you want to done and will help you keep from getting flustered by different issues as they arise.
Soft Skills to Build
Depending on your disability, some of these skills may be more or less difficult to learn. Whether it's an issue with time management due to ADHD or communication because of speech or hearing impairment. But this just means you'll need to find different strategies and tools that work for you. This isn't a one-solution-fits-all type of thing.
Communication
Communication skills are some of the most important to build and develop. Almost any job you do will require to some degree communication with others. Being able to clearly communicate your thoughts, ideas, and concerns and understand those of others can make a big difference in your day-to-day life.
Teamwork
At some point in your career, you will likely need to work within a team, even if you prefer to work alone. Building your teamwork skills and preparing now can help you be able to handle team settings when they appear.
Better teamwork skills mean you'll be able to add more to the group and your ability to navigate group settings can help improve your job satisfaction.
Time Management
Time management is one of the hardest soft skills to learn for most people. It's also the skill with the greatest variety of solutions. For some people, the use of a written-out schedule is enough to keep them on track, while others need more advanced technology to help.
But it is also one of the most highly valued soft skills by employers as well, in big part because better time management means higher productivity.
Adaptability
Life is always changing and can be incredibly difficult to handle sometimes. By working to improve your ability to adapt you can be better prepared to handle those changes as they come.
This can help improve your ability to face life and can help you come up with new and creative solutions to issues in your personal life and at work.
Adding Soft Skills to Your CV
When you put together or update your CV to look for a new job, it's important to find ways to highlight your soft skills.
Your first step should be to think about the kind of jobs you'll be applying for and which of your soft skills might be most highly valued in that position. For example, in an IT position, you may need to rely more heavily on time management and creative problem-solving skills. Make sure that these are the skills you emphasize in your CV.
When you've decided which of your soft skills to highlight, you should add them to a skills section on your CV. You will also want to mention them in your cover letter if you're including one. Talk about how these skills have helped you to be successful in similar positions in the past.
Finally, you should highlight these in your interview. This is especially important if you don't have as much relevant experience or technical knowledge as they may be looking for.
Understanding the Importance of Soft Skills
By improving your soft skills you can help yourself do better at work and at home. Be sure to highlight the soft skills you already have on your CV when applying to jobs and get a leg up on the competition.
If you're looking to update or redo your CV or resume, we can help! Check out our free resume builder today.