Even though hard skills are necessary to get a job, you need soft skills if you want to keep that job or advance in it. This is simply because everyone who gets hired comes with hard skills. Therefore, career success is dependent upon soft skills. Soft skills include taking responsibility, making effective decisions, setting goals, managing time, prioritizing tasks, persevering, giving strong efforts, working well in teams, communicating effectively, having empathy, knowing how to learn, exhibiting self-control, and believing in one's own self-worth. For this, I identify soft skills as ones EQ.
Ones EQ is portable, unlike many hard skills. For example: software gets updated constantly. By the time one has finished learning how one software works they will likely not use it for very long before a new version comes out. Yes, one could argue that a person will always have the knowledge of that outdated software, but that's what it is-outdated and therefore useless. Soft skills, however, will stay with you and forever be the same wherever one goes. They will always be necessary and employers will always look for them in people. One study suggests that only 15% of workers lose their jobs because they can't do the work. Our world is constantly evolving and coming out with the next thing. In fact, ¼ of workers in the United States today are in occupations that didn't even exist a few decades ago.
For these reasons I conclude that hard skills are important, but soft skills are more important. I personally would rather have an abundant amount of soft skills over hard skills. Hard skills can always be taught, while soft skills are more like habits, which are harder to gain. I think one career specialist put it best by saying, "Having hard skills gets you hired; lacking soft skills gets you fired."
I wanted to add a tip for everyone. We all display our hard skills in our resume, but have you ever thought of adding your soft skills in there also?
ReplyDeleteMany employers look for soft skills when they hire someone. What did you think interviewing was for? Your potential employer is trying to see how well you express yourself and if you're respectful to name just a couple.
However, if you do add soft skills to your resume, make sure you're prepared to tell why you feel you have those skills!
Lol Nice quote. But yeah i guess it is true, EQ seems very necessary and the way you put it made me understand this stuff better. lol This also makes me realize that i think I have a low EQ. All that stuff about goals and stuff, not to good at that and well i'm more of the thinker type person than the very social person.
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