In today’s competitive job market, employees go to great lengths to appeal to their interviewers.
While job experience and education are crucial, they’re often not enough to land job seekers their dream job.
Increasingly, soft skills have become a key differentiator for interviewers. Recognizing this trend, many forward-thinking professionals are turning to tools like the HIGH5 strengths test to identify and leverage their unique soft skills. By understanding their innate strengths, candidates can more effectively showcase the soft skills that set them apart in interviews and on the job.
In some circumstances, having certain non-technical skills and abilities will determine whether a candidate gets hired or rejected.
So, it is crucial for potentially recruited individuals to obtain such essential skills.
This article will teach you everything you need to know about soft and hard skills, as well as how job candidates can further their already existent professional skills.
What are Soft Skills? Definition & Theory
Soft skills are described as a vast amount of abilities and these include interpersonal skills, communication skills, time management skills amount others.
However, all of these abilities are non-technical. They are not something that is learned through a degree or formal education.
Rather, they are personal traits and habits an individual utilizes to succeed in the workplace.
They do not have anything to do with cognition and physical ability, as some hard skills do.
Individuals can be excellent at technical skills, such as coding, but fail to communicate or have empathy, leading to crucial problems in the workplace.
This is why soft skills are so important.
List of 20 Most Important Examples of Soft Skills
These skills are beneficial to nearly all industries and can benefit most employees.
The following is a list of just a few soft skill examples:
- Problem-solving skills
- Leadership skills
- Critical thinking/analytical thinking
- Listening skills
- Communication skills
- People skills, such as understanding the needs of fellow colleagues and customers
- Positive mindset
- Creative thinking
- Collaboration and teamwork
- Persistence and perseverance
- Dependability
- Strong work ethic and motivation
- Adaptability
- Empathy
- Confidence
- Honesty
- Organization
- Attention to Detail
- Assertiveness
- Leadership
How to Measure & Improve Soft Skills
While soft skills aren’t easily quantifiable, there are effective ways to measure and improve them. The first step is to identify your current skill set and understand how developed these skills are. This is where tools like the HIGH5 strengths test become invaluable. By providing a comprehensive assessment of your top strengths, HIGH5 offers a solid foundation for understanding your soft skills. Armed with this knowledge, you can then focus on leveraging your strengths and developing areas that need improvement, tracking your progress through real-world applications and feedback.
Usually, this can be determined by accessing your current situation at work.
See what current feedback you receive for your work, and when it is possible, make a note of that.
Positive feedback and any achievements in career development both show you your current skills.
Additionally, you should look at your prior experiences to see where you have grown the most.
Out of difficult situations, you may have grown and developed a better understanding of the world, leading to skill development.
Then, you must learn to build positive habits.
These habits introduce you to new skills and build apart your existing abilities.
The specific habits you must form depend on the skill you are trying to develop or acquire.
In general, you can find tips from your managers by asking for consistent feedback on your performance.
Specifically, try and focus on embodying your company’s values, as it is somewhat easy for managers to access.
Do your best to handle difficult personalities, understand other employee’s points of view, and become persistent.
While improvements in soft skills are harder to measure than the development of technical abilities, you can collect data beyond your manager’s input as well.
For example, see if you become more productive. If you begin working on your perseverance or critical thinking skills, you will likely see physical improvements in your work.
This is true with most soft skills: there will be a tangible impact on your work ethic and satisfaction, so try to notice this and quantify it by measuring your output.
Pro Tip From HIGH5
Leverage your HIGH5 strengths report to create a personalized soft skills development plan. Focus on situations where you can apply your top strengths, and look for opportunities to stretch yourself in areas that align with your natural talents. This targeted approach can lead to more rapid and sustainable soft skill development.
Focus on Your Most Relevant Soft Skills
To impress potential employers and achieve long-term success in your chosen career, it’s crucial to identify and focus on your most relevant soft skills. The HIGH5 strengths test can be an excellent starting point for this process. By revealing your top five strengths, it helps you understand which soft skills come naturally to you and are most likely to be relevant in your field.
Rather than attempting to master every possible skill – an approach that can lead to inefficiency and burnout – the HIGH5 test enables you to concentrate on honing the soft skills that align with your innate strengths and are most valuable in your industry.
Make sure you stay true to yourself while developing your skills, meaning you do not overwork yourself or stretch yourself beyond a certain limit.
Rather, you can focus on those which will bring the most benefit to your work.
Important skills will vary from industry to industry.
It is important to pursue a career that aligns with the skills you possess and has work you truly enjoy.
In general, job descriptions provide information on what tasks and skills you might need to accomplish daily.
If there is a specific skill list or the job listing clarifies daily duties, use that information to see which skills would benefit you most in that environment.
Additionally, finding adjacent skills to work on can make you stand out from the rest of the job prospects.
Every industry has a general skills list that applies across employers. Some employers may have a skill gap in their teams.
If you ask them about their current team and any skills they are lacking, try to fill those skills in.
This benefits the entire team as these are the most crucial skills for you to possess.
Consider the ideal candidate for your employer: what qualities do they have? Does the job description mention specific job duties?
If so, think of skills that can make performing these tasks easier and try to acquire them.
This way, you stay focused on only the most relevant skills for your job.
When it comes to soft skills, in particular, create lists of skills that would benefit you in a certain workplace.
To do this, you must understand the company’s culture and what personality of employees they value.
Learning more about social skills should not be the top priority of a radiologist, as a more appropriate soft skill target should be advancing your organizational skills.
Likewise, artists may value creativity skills far more than conflict management skills.
It truly does come down to your profession, passion, position, and company culture.
Asking an HR director about a company’s values not only makes you more clear about which additional skills you should learn, but it also makes you seem engaged and passionate.
Pro Tip From HIGH5
After taking the HIGH5 test, cross-reference your top strengths with the soft skills most valued in your industry. Look for job descriptions in your field and identify where your strengths naturally align with the required soft skills. This targeted approach will help you focus your development efforts and articulate your value to potential employers more effectively.
The Importance of Soft Skills in the Workplace
Some individuals believe that education and technical savvy alone will land them the job of their dreams.
This cannot be further from the truth.
Soft skills contribute immensely to team dynamics and overall workplace success.
In fact, a majority of HR directors (57%) consider soft skills more important than hard skills. This is where tools like the HIGH5 strengths test become crucial for both individuals and organizations. By helping team members identify their unique strengths, HIGH5 facilitates better team composition and collaboration.
For instance, knowing who has natural strengths in areas like conflict resolution can be instrumental in maintaining a healthy and productive team. Moreover, when team members understand and appreciate each other’s strengths, it fosters a more positive and efficient work environment.
With the encouragement of traits like listening skills, empathy, a positive attitude, and communication, teams can work together to solve problems and overcome obstacles.
Additionally, today’s customers and clients need workers with soft skills.
Customer service and verbal communication have become huge beneficial traits in the technology industry.
This is so because technology is becoming more and more advanced while being affordable, so consumers start looking to buy from businesses that differentiate themselves in a unique way: having an incredibly customer-oriented and helpful team.
Soft skills help employees stay true to their core values while being valuable to a business.
For instance, many individuals value hard work and dedication.
By using a soft skill such as stress management, they can continue working hard without burnout.
Additional benefits of this technique include more career satisfaction, meeting deadlines with greater ease, and an improved work-life balance.
Pro Tip From HIGH5
Use your HIGH5 strengths profile to identify how you can best contribute to your team’s soft skill ecosystem. If one of your top strengths is related to communication or empathy, for example, you might take the lead in facilitating team discussions or mediating conflicts. By playing to your strengths, you’ll not only enhance your team’s performance but also find greater satisfaction in your role.
Differences Between Soft Skills & Hard Skills
Hard skills must be learned through job training, education, or practice.
Like all skills, they improve an employee’s performance and make them more competitive in a job market.
Thus, those who acquire hard skills find their work more satisfying and have high job retention rates.
Of the two skill types, hard skills are much easier to teach and are far more measurable/easy to track growth.
This means that learning a hard skill could be far easier for the average worker, for it demands virtually no changes in one’s personality.
On the other hand, soft skills are far less measurable and more difficult to teach.
They are traits and job habits that contribute to an employee’s long-term success in an industry, including how they work and communicate with others and how one leads.
In a LinkedIn study, 69% of HR directors also agree that behavioral skills are hard to access, but that a resume composing of experience and hard skills is not enough.
These valued skills include traits like open-mindedness, people skills, effective communication, critical thinking, empathy, love of learning, teamwork, integrity, among other behavioral skills.
What are Hybrid Skills?
If a candidate has hybrid skills, they possess both hard and soft skills.
The ideal employee has varying levels of both types of skills depending on the industry they work in.
In the technical sphere, software development agencies may require lots of education within a particular field, like computer science, as well as coding knowledge.
But, they may value a hybrid candidate who has critical thinking skills over someone who is purely technical.
Being someone with hybrid skills does not mean obtaining a perfect balance between the two skill sets.
You can still have these strengths in varying proportions.
However, it is crucial for both hard and soft skills to contribute to your success at work.
Soft Skills FAQ
What are the 7 essential soft skills?
There are a plethora of soft skills that you could acquire. However, some are more common and more often demanded than others.
7 soft skills that are now considered essential include: communication skills, teamwork, adaptability, problem-solving, leadership, work ethic, and time management/organization.
There are also skills within these broad categories. For instance, active listening is a part of communication, and creativity is a part of problem-solving.
What are 10 examples of soft skills?
With so many soft skills out there, it can be difficult to narrow down which ones you should focus on.
If you are having trouble, consider the following 10 soft skills for inspiration: communication skills, organization, commitment, teamwork, critical and creative thinking, adaptability, leadership, work ethic, emotional intelligence, and time management/organization.
What are the top 3 soft skills?
The top soft skills for you will depend on the field you are trying to enter and your specific employee. However, in general, some soft skills are universally beneficial.
The top three soft skills that you should focus on are teamwork skills, adaptability, and work ethic. Team work includes empathy, communication, and listening.
Adaptability is crucial in a constantly changing environment; it incorporates critical and creative thinking. Finally, work ethic ensures that you work hard. You cannot accomplish your goals without putting in the effort.
Overall Conclusion For Soft Skill
Soft skills are no longer abilities that are only necessary for teachers or customer service personnel.
They will soon be a deciding factor for hiring employees, and the popularity of soft skill-based hiring is already on the rise.
Developing these skills may take time, effort, and a change of heart to some, but it will be well worth it in the end.
Personal growth and skill development is an extremely motivating and fulfilling experience for many employees.
It impacts people for the rest of their life, not just assist you in a job interview.
You will not only become a more productive employee but a happier individual in general.
