What are Soft Skills? A Comprehensive Guide

Do you struggle with enhancing your soft skills? Don’t worry, we have got you covered. Soft skills are personality-related skills that help you perform well in any social setup including a professional one. But that is not all, there is so much more that you can learn about soft skills with this comprehensive blog. This blog will help you understand what are soft skills and it will also walk you through their importance with detailed examples.

Soft Skills Definition

Soft skills are personality-related skills that help you in performing well in a job environment and in general social setups. They are non-technical and do not define your academic qualifications rather they are the skills that are seen as a behavioral pattern in a candidate.

Soft skills include time management, creative thinking, teamwork, etc. The emotions and ability to interact with others are also counted under soft skills. In the upcoming section, we will learn about the difference between hard skills and soft skills which will help you understand both of them in detail.

What are Soft Skills and Hard Skills?

These two skills are the distinct categories of skills that an individual should possess. They mark the various points that define the professional and non-professional personality of a person.

• Hard Skills: Hard skills are abilities acquired through formal education, training, and courses. They are mostly referred to the professional qualities that a candidate possesses. They are technical in nature and can be categorized into programming, graphic designing, and data analysis skills.
• Soft Skills: Soft skills define the nature of a candidate. They are non-technical and are referred to as interpersonal skills. An individual’s emotions, communication abilities, and interactions with other beings account for it.

Importance of Soft Skills

Soft skills are important skills to possess because of the following reasons:

• Help in Difficult Situations- Soft skills determine if you will thrive in a workplace and keep you calm when the situation is not exactly in your favor. Hence, it becomes important to possess different types of soft skills to fit in at various jobs and handle situations. 
• Cultural Fit- They can also help with determining which candidates would be good cultural fits. This assessment increases the possibility of a candidate staying at a company for a longer duration. 
• Hard to Learn- Unlike hard skills, soft skills can be harder to teach, so the interviewers aim to hire candidates who exhibit these traits. For example, if you want to be hired as a UX designer, empathy and communication are highly valued soft skills. A UX designer is tasked with creating user-friendly experiences. If you can empathize with the user, then you will be able to create solutions that genuinely help them. To do this, you often have to conduct user research which needs communication skills and patience to complete the process according to the convenience of the user.

Soft Skills Examples

Here’s a list of soft skills which are important for employers:

• Communication: Communication skills include the ability to convey information and active listening, you will require them even in most solitary jobs. Except for conveying essential information, you should be able to work with colleagues that you do not get along with. It can take on various forms such as written communication, verbal communication, body language, and listening skills.
• Creativity: Creativity as a soft skill does not strictly refer to artistic endeavors; it refers to the creative approach to solving problems, thinking of new ideas, and making processes more efficient. Hence, it has become important for you to have a certain degree of creativity to excel in your fields.
• Adaptability: Employers always look for candidates who can adapt to any situation and circumstance without disrupting work. For example, the COVID-19 outbreak transformed the workplace, people who could adapt to the work-from-home model had better opportunities than the ones who could not.
• Teamwork: You will be expected to work on a few tasks together in a team even if you are not applying for a team-oriented position in a company. It will require you to communicate, give and receive feedback, ask questions, be flexible about ideas and opinions, empathize, and manage time efficiently in order to meet the goals collectively.
• Emotional Intelligence (EQ): EQ refers to being aware of not only your own emotions but also of those around you. In addition to recognizing emotions, you should be able to manage and regulate your emotions according to the environment and the situation. For example, dealing with an upset customer may cause you to feel stressed, however, you would need to stay calm in the situation and address the issue effectively.
• Time Management: Time management is an essential skill in a fast-paced workplace and will often be a part of most job descriptions. You will need to manage your time, organize, prioritize tasks, and manage expectations and tasks accordingly. Besides turning in your work on time, this soft skill also refers to punctuality, which is strictly observed in most organizations.
• Persuasion: Persuasion is the ability to convince someone else about your idea it is frequently used by most working professionals. However, persuasion is closely associated with sales and marketing but most people use it for their own growth. For example, if you have a new idea to improve the workflow of your team, you need to be persuasive enough for the other team members to agree with you.
• Decision-making: Decision-making can look very different in the workplace as compared to the decision-making that you have to do daily. It consists of identifying the problem, considering the different viewpoints, analyzing the effectiveness of each option, implementing the solution, and learning from the result. It may seem more relevant for leadership roles or analytical roles, but it is equally important for each employee to possess the ability of critical thinking.

How Can You Include Soft Skills in Your Resume?

You must read the job description attentively to know which skills are required, make a list of the soft skills that you possess, and select two-three from among them. Then mention them in your resume along with former experiences and you will be good to go. Here’s an example of how you can demonstrate your soft skills:

“Planned and executed a marketing campaign by coordinating with five interns via virtual meetings.” 

If you can support your answer with numbers then that makes it even better as it will give a good metric for the interviewer to judge on.

How to Showcase Your Soft Skills in an Interview?

It is hard for an employer to judge soft skills, as they are difficult to quantify. While hard skills can be measured through direct questions, this is not the case for soft skills. Employers often use behavioral or hypothetical scenarios to analyze your soft skills. For example:

• Tell me about a time when you handled a conflict at work.
• If you have to manage multiple projects at the same time, how would you do it?
• Tell me about a time when you had to decide without help from your manager.

The above-mentioned questions can be answered with the help of the SOAR framework. 

In this technique, you:

• Begin by giving the context of the situation. For example, you were working as a graphic designer for a start-up. 
• Describe the obstacles and difficulties you faced. For instance, you had a hard time with the number of projects because you were new to the job and had a tough time managing them. 
• Follow this scenario with the action you took. In this case, you can say that you suggested a system where the team members could mention the priority of their requirements; this change would allow you to organize better. 
• Lastly, try to elaborately mention the result of your action. Not only were you able to complete your work, but your methods also helped other employees streamline their work as well.

How to Develop Soft Skills?

Now that you know about the importance of soft skills in the workplace, let’s learn how you can develop or enhance them:

• Identify the Soft Skills You Need and Work on Them Consistently: Once you know which soft skills you want to learn, you can come up with a plan to work on them regularly. For example, if you would like to work on your time management skill, you can start by learning how to prioritize tasks. After you have decided on the course of action, record your progress and track the changes.
• Seek Constructive Feedback From Colleagues and Friends: You can actively seek feedback on your progress from your classmates, friends, teachers, and fellow interns. For example, if you worked on a project, you could ask for feedback on improvement areas and work on them again accordingly.
• Get Out of Your Comfort Zone: Always try to enhance the skills that you lack, and seek challenges that will bring you out of your comfort zone. Once you know which skill you want to work on, find different ways to challenge yourself. For example, if you are trying to improve your verbal communication, volunteer for a presentation or an event.
• Enroll in Online Training: There are methods to improvise these days that are easier to avail. You can find online classes relating to the skill that you want to work on, after that you can challenge yourself in unexpected ways through that course and get a concrete idea of your progress.

How to Assess the Soft Skills of Candidates?

The following points can help employers assess the soft skills of candidates:

• Have a decided objective of what they are looking for in a candidate, and make sure to ask the same questions from all the candidates to get a better idea of who is deserving.
• Ask questions that are more on the behavioral side in order to understand and evaluate the candidate.
• Use hypothetical questions, scenarios, and activities that put the candidate to the test, during which employers mark down the response of the candidate.
• Pay keen attention to the body language and answers of the candidate as it makes them a clear understanding and make correct decisions.

Conclusion

Now that you know what are soft skills, try to develop them by working on them daily and if you need a helping hand you can opt for business communication skills training that aims to help students with their workplace skills such as written communication, verbal communication, active listening, and empathy.