The study on the most in-demand skills of 2019 published by LinkedIn (2019, Spain) shows a division into two categories: hard and soft skills. In this post, we still discuss the impact of hard and soft skills and their impact on gaining recognition in a position.
Soft skills can be defined as those that cannot be easily defined or measured; they mainly refer to personal characteristics, such as empathy, communication and listening.
Hard skills, on the other hand, are those required to do a job, a task in particular, and that we can acquire through training, experience, observation or speciality programmes.
LinkedIn lists the following skills:
- Soft skills:
- Creativity
- Persuasion
- Collaboration
- Adaptability
- Time Management
“Strengthening a soft skill is one of the best investments you can make in your career, as they never go out of style,” wrote Paul Petrone in a blog post, Editor at LinkedIn. He adds that “the rise of AI is only making soft skills increasingly important, as they are precisely the type of skills robots can’t automate.”
Mixed experience
With the advance of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, human talent managers demand a greater combination of skills. As technologies such as automation and algorithms create new high-quality job positions while they eliminate others, the demand of such competencies is likely to increase.
Though the weight of a position in particular basically falls within hard skills, soft skills (also called “transversal competencies”) should not be overlooked. The World Economic Forum published “The Future of Jobs” report (2018, U.S.A.), which indicated that more than one third of the skills considered important by talent management departments, are going to change. This report summarises the top ten soft skills:
- Complex problem-solving
- Critical thinking
- Creativity
- Leadership
- Coordination
- Emotional Intelligence
- Reasoning and decision-making
- Service orientation
- Negotiation
- Cognitive flexibility
People spend the majority of their day at the workplace, where they frequently face different types of problems. In this scenario, there are plenty of problems. Thus, soft skills have become increasingly important and valued in the business world, since they serve to adequately face the work day. However, these skills point at the emotional and interpersonal side and at how people develop within an organisation.
Developing soft skills: work in teams, have a good communication level, be able to adapt under different scenarios, have a positive attitude at the office, etc. These are perceived as positive qualities in employees, especially in such a competitive market in which there is a high turnover and businesses need productive employees that are aligned with the company’s growth.
Executives and professionals face daily difficulties, such as breaking paradigms, getting out of their comfort zone, and stepping out of the concept of being a “boss” to become a “leader.” This is when we need to work with individuals who possess soft skills:
