Soft skills are not directly related to a specific profession or activity, but rather determine a person’s behavior and way of thinking in different situations. That is, these are the same skills for designers, marketers, entrepreneurs, or lawyers.
Being able to play with strategies at a gambling website Philippines or draw a website design in Figma is a hard skill.
Being able to negotiate with the customer, figure out all the necessary nuances before the work starts, and structure the process so as to use resources efficiently is a soft skill.
Development of flexible skills helps to work with large volumes of information, quickly find the right decisions, communicate effectively with colleagues, acquaintances and partners, set the right goals, resolve conflicts and in general work and live more consciously.Â
Creativity
This is the ability to generate new, unconventional ideas and solutions. Creative thinking and open-mindedness are relevant not only in the creative professions, but also in other areas.
Communication
People are social, so communication is one of the most important skills. It includes the ability to negotiate, defend your opinion, work in a team, communicate your thoughts in correspondence and verbal speeches, and make useful acquaintances.
Decision-making
The ability to analyze a situation and choose the best possible option. This skill enables you to achieve your goals quickly and not to waste time and resources on unnecessary actions.
Critical Thinking
The ability to limit oneself from useless content, to consciously approach the consumption of information, to question facts and try to get to the bottom, to think rationally and find connections.
Information Management SkillsÂ
This skill makes it possible to find information about anything, distinguish truth from lies, analyze data, and, most importantly, make conclusions.
Emotional Intelligence
This is the ability to understand emotions, motivations, desires and behavior of other people and yourself. And, no less importantly, to consciously manage them.
Self-awareness and Self-reflection
The ability to “look inside yourself” and understand your true desires, motives, and behavior. The skill allows you to rationally evaluate your past actions and make plans and goals.
Self-organization
The skill to effectively organize the work processes or distribute time, so as to have time to perform the necessary tasks, without burning out.
Learning and Knowledge Management
It’s an ability not simply to consume information, but to apply the received knowledge in life, transforming them into skills, and further – into competences. That is the ability to receive information and put it into practice.
Flexibility
It’s the ability to live and work under uncertainty and to adapt quickly to changing conditions. This includes the ability to make decisions within tight deadlines and to manage resources wisely.
It’s knowledge and experience in a particular field. For example, for an Internet marketer it’s the skill of working with analytical tools, for a designer, it’s the ability to work in Photoshop or Figma, for a target marketer it’s understanding how the algorithms of social networking advertising platforms are arranged and experience working with them.
Which Skills Employers AssessÂ
There is no single answer to the question “which is more important. It’s unlikely that a company will agree to hire a specialist, such as a tagger, with minimal or no hard skills, even if his soft skills are developed at a high level.
Researchers at Harvard and Stanford Universities and the Carnegie Foundation found that soft skills determine 85% of a person’s success in the profession.
Nevertheless, it’s useful for any worker to develop soft skills, no matter what his level of professionalism is. The ability to communicate, to work with information, to learn quickly, to make quick decisions are definitely a plus for a candidate.
How to Understand What Soft Skills You Need and How to Develop Them
To understand what skills you should focus on, answer these questions:
- What exactly do you want to achieve in your career, and what steps will you need to take to do so?
- What are the specifics of your job?
- How often do you have to adjust to changes and make quick decisions?
- What tasks or parts of your job are difficult for you?
Write down exactly what skills you lack and begin to gradually develop them.
How to Pump up Soft Skills
- Analyze your actions more. Approach your work with more awareness, more often ask yourself “why I am not good at it”, “why I am acting this way”, “what can I do to avoid repeating this mistake.
- Read literature on a variety of flexible skills.
- Put it into practice. You can only develop any skill by using the knowledge in life.
