Soft skills are more social than technical, and reflect your ability to accept feedback, maintain organization, problem solve, and collaborate with others in workplace.
While technical skills on your resume may score you an interview and fetch you the job, soft skills are vital to keeping the job once you’ve gotten it, and can be transferred to any other job or career. Candidates with strong soft skills are in high demand for many different types of jobs
What are soft skills?
Soft skills are a combination of people skills, social skills, communication skills, character or personality traits, attitudes, career attributes, social intelligence, and emotional intelligence quotients that enable employees to navigate their environment, work well with others, perform well and achieve their goals. They are interpersonal attributes you need to succeed in workplace.
Employers require these soft skills from you to be assured of sanity in their establishments.
List of Top Soft Skills
Below is a list of the most important soft skills employers look for. Develop these skills and emphasize them in job applications, resumes, cover letters, and interviews.
1. Communication
There can be no relationship in workplace without communication. Communication skills are important in almost every job. How well do you communicate? No matter your area of work, you will need to communicate with people as long as you have people as clients or colleagues. You will also need to be able to speak clearly and politely with people in person, by phone, and in writing.
Communication entails both written and oral. You will need to develop this crucial soft skill. Being able to communicate effectively doesn’t come overnight, you need to develop it by training.
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2. Listening Skill
Apart from being a good communicator, you will also need to be a good listener. Employers want employees who can not only communicate their own ideas, but who also listen empathetically to others. Listening is a particularly important skill in customer service jobs. It is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process. Listening is one of the most important skills you can have. An active process of getting information, ideas.
3. Critical Thinking
No matter what the job, employers want candidates who can analyze situations and make informed decisions. Whether you are working with data, teaching students, or fixing a home heating system, you need to be able to understand problems, think critically, and devise solutions. Skills related to critical thinking include creativity, flexibility, and curiosity.
4. Leadership
While not every job opening is a leadership role, most employers will want to know that you have the ability to make decisions when push comes to shove, and can manage situations and people. The ability to step up to the plate in a difficult situation and help resolve it is something employers look for in prospective employees
If you are interviewing for a job that has the potential for advancement, the employer will want to know that you have what it takes to become a leader.
Other skills related to leadership include your ability to resolve problems and conflicts between people, and to make executive decisions.
5. Positive Attitude
Employers are always seeking people who will bring a positive attitude to the office. They want employees who will be friendly to others, eager to work, and generally a pleasure to be around. Being able to keep things positive is especially important if you’re working in a fast-paced, high-stress work environment. Confidence, courtesy, enthusiasm, honesty, patience, respect and friendliness are all parts of positive attitude employers want.
6. Teamwork
No matter where you work, you can’t work in isolation. Hiring managers look for job candidates who can work well with others. You need to be able to work effectively with the people around you. You need to be able to work with others even if you do not always see eye to eye.
As a team worker, you have the ability to collaborate, negotiate with others, and to recognize and appreciate diversity in a team. Another related skill is the ability to accept and apply feedback from others.
7. Work Ethic
Employers look for job candidates with a strong work ethic. Such people come to work on time, complete tasks in a timely manner, and stay both focused and organized. They are able to budget their time and complete their work thoroughly. While they can work independently, people with a strong work ethic can also follow instructions.
A strong work ethic is difficult to teach, so employers will be impressed if you can demonstrate it in your job application.
8. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence refers to your ability to manage your own emotions and notice the emotions of others. Your social skills, self-management practices, and overall presence give hiring managers clues on your emotional intelligence (also known as EQ). Even though you won’t see emotional intelligence listed on job description requirements,
- How do you handle frustration?
- Are you able to think clearly and act accordingly in an embarrassing moment?
- How can you help a coworker who is experiencing this?
- These are more are the matrices for measuring emotional intelligence.
9. Adaptability
Maintaining soft skills isn’t exclusively for new employees. In today’s technology-driven business environment, the willingness of employees to follow the latest news and adapt to the latest technology is critical for business development. In order to succeed, you’ll need to have a passion for continuous learning and make efforts to stay on top of industry news. If you have an open mind and are willing to adapt, you set your own limitations!
10. Perform Under Pressure
The competitive nature of the marketplace creates tight deadlines and pressure to produce quickly. Failure of the company to release the product on time would mean them losing the opportunity to its competitors. However, to perform under pressure, you need to have mastery of the aforementioned soft skills such as being a team player, emotional intelligence, problem solving skills, strong work ethics, etc.
