“People who wish to go into the future should have two skills to succeed – the ability to deal with people and the ability to sell.”

– Shiv Khera, author

There is no falsehood in the fact that competition in the job sector is growing rapidly, and for grabbing a decent job in the market you need to stand out from the crowd. Hence you need to acquire every possible skill that will uplift you in your quest for a job hunt. So, what are those skills that will complement your already existing knowledge and hard skills?

They are known as soft skills. Soft skills or more commonly referred to as people or personality skills. They will help you to stand out from the crowd and do better at interviews and the workspace.

 “Business is clear that developing the right attitudes and attributes in people – such as resilience, respect, enthusiasm, and creativity – is just as important as academic or technical skills. In an ever more competitive jobs market, it is such qualities that will give our young talent a head start and also allow existing employees to progress to higher-skilled, better-paid roles.”

– Neil Carberry, Director for Employment and Skills at CBI via backingsoftskills.co.uk

Even though soft skills are a very important factor in making or breaking your career, not much attention is paid towards polishing it. As they are difficult to quantify and cannot be taught in a classroom or be measured, they are hence difficult to gain, but not impossible. These skills grow through proper practice and can be refined if proper time and effort are paid towards them.

Identifying these skills can be a tough task but one of the ways by which you can identify what all soft skills you possess, is by self-analyzing it. Below are a list of important workspace required soft skills, how many can you identify within yourself?

• Time management
• Teamwork
• Communication
• Adaptability
• Ability to perform under pressure
• Innovation
• Listening
• Delegation
• Creativity
• Work ethic
• Leadership
• Problem-solving

Via-glassdoor.com

Another way is to ask your family, friends, and peers for help. Ask them to tell you about the soft skills that they think you possess and if possible mention the instances where you might have displayed them, for you to have better analysis and understanding.

The above-mentioned skills are very efficient to help you grab a decent job in a good company. So now the question arises on how to develop them. You can develop them through the following ways:

• Get a trainer

“Partnering with a coach can have an invaluable impact on your success as a leader,” quoted by Mikaela Kiner, founder, and CEO of uniquely. A trainer can help you in finding your soft skills quickly while suggesting ways to polish it further. So finding the right trainer or coach is essential.

• Have a learning mindset

While learning important skills that are related to one’s personality, one should always approach it with an open mind and eagerness to learn. Since soft skills have emerged as an important ability that employers are looking for nowadays learning and refining them is a must, so with that mindset, one should learn practice with all their hearts.

• Take an online course

Thanks to the onset of the era of technology, everything in today’s world is available online. You can take up an online course that will help you learn these skills from places like the comfort of your home.

Skilling You is one such platform that allows you to gain soft skills such as spoken English, negotiation skills, interview skills along with hard skills such as sales management loan expertise, and many more.

• Create space for self-reflection

For knowing how to improve, you must first find out about your weaknesses. You need to spend some time on self- reflection, while being honest with yourself to find out where you are lacking and at what all places there is a scope of improvement.

• Ask a friend

Practicing with a friend will not only help you in refining the skills you already have but also in finding out the places where you are lacking. For example, if you want to get better at leadership skills, you and your friends can organize an activity where you will be in charge and lead the whole group forward. Like when you are going on a trek, where will you stay, how will divide the total time up for different activities. It can be a fun learning process.

• Gather as much feedback as you can

It is important to know when and where you are making mistakes, and for knowing that gathering feedback is important. Positive and negative feedback both can help you in improving as well as performing better. While positive feedback boosts your confidence level while negative ones point out your mistakes and hence help you rectify them.

Soft skills are difficult to obtain but yet very valuable because they ultimately complement your already existing hard skills. It will be hard to learn and refine these skills but nothing is impossible if you keep practicing and giving things just the right amount of time and effort. Take part in as many opportunities you can find and grab it, to hone your skills, and always keep trying to become a better version of yourself so that you can shine like a moon amongst the group of stars.