In today’s world where we witness an enormous neck to neck competition in the corporate world to get an edge in your resume can be highly beneficial. One such way is to gain a soft skill, and also polish and refine the ones already existing. They will not only help you in emerging and shining amongst the crowd but also help in enhancing your already existing hard skills, making you stand out from the crowd.
What are soft skills?
Soft skills are a cluster of productive personality traits that include a combination of people skills, social skills, character or personality traits, attitudes, career attributes along with social and emotional intelligence quotient that helps them in creating a suitable work environment that leads to proper teamwork, performing well which will ultimately lead in one’s achieving their goal. In simpler terms, soft skills are people skills and how a person interacts and builds a trusting relationship.
Soft skills are much harder to acquire than hard skills which are “job-specific skills” and can be grasped while training and through education. Soft skills, on the other hand, are connected to a person’s emotions and personality traits and can help in “understanding and reading” a person. Some of the important soft skills include:
- Effective communication skills
- Teamwork
- Leadership
- Adaptability
- Work Ethic
- Conflict resolution
- Flexibility
- Problem-solving
- Persuasion
- Dependability
- Research
- Creativity
- Integrity
- Time management
Why are soft skills important?
Soft skills can be an important skill that will aid you in future-proofing your career. Employers are nowadays looking for people who are all-rounders and not just good in one specific field. Hence having both hard and soft skills can ultimately be proved beneficial for your success in the workplace along with your personal life, and your company’s success. Honing soft skills will help in improving customer service and building a stronger team dynamic. The various other benefits can be seen as following:
- Effective communication
Customers and clients nowadays demand soft skills. As they have a huge market to choose from, thanks to technology, they look for quality and better customer service. Strong soft skills will help the employees communicate productively with the customer/client. The ability to communicate on a human level and expressing yourselves more clearly while listening and tackling difficult conversations is what soft skills will make you equipped for. Providing the customers with the satisfaction level that they require, and staying calm and collected even when the customer becomes irate is what soft skills will help you with.
- Lead to an increase in sales
Soft skills play an important role in finding, attracting and, retaining customers. And happy customers lead to more sales growth. Employees can use these sills professionally to create an engagement with the customer/client at a personal level. As the workers have mastered the art of persuasion which is an important part of this skill, the customers never feel coerced into a sale, because they overcome this reluctance with tact.
- The modern workplace is interpersonal
Creating a healthy and productive environment while working is essential in any workspace. Soft skills ensure that the employees are collectively collaborating and working together to meet the company’s goals and objectives and thus empowers them with skills such as active listening, collaboration, presenting ideas, and communication. Hence these skills will ultimately build a stronger team with inculcating a sense of community among workers.
- Future workplaces will rely more on soft skills
With the growth in AI or Artificial Intelligence and automation and the rise in technology, many of the technical jobs will become outsourced. Hence, a greater proportion of jobs will ultimately be depending on soft skills. A fascinating study by Deloitte Access Economics predicts that “Soft skill-intensive occupations will account for two-thirds of all jobs by 2030”.Traditional skills such as communication, teamwork, and critical thinking will be of more importance.
- Soft skills set you apart from the crowd
iCIMS Hiring Insights (2017) found that “Ninety-four percent of recruiting professionals believe an employee with stronger soft skills has a better chance of being promoted to a leadership position than an employee with more years of experience but weaker soft skills.” Hard skills are mostly impractical if the worker does not have suitable soft skills to utilize the technical expertise at proper time and place. Technical skills alone are never truly effective in any workspace.
These skills are vital if you want to progress in your field and career, as soft skills are a vital element and will set you apart from the rest of the crowd at an interview or in the job. Skilling You is one such application that provides you with English language courses that will ultimately help you in improving your communication skills and hence honing better soft skills.
