Soft Skills

Qualifications are vital to building a successful career in most professions, but it is also important to remember the significance of soft skills.  Soft skills comprise of many attributes that include problem solving; communication; numeracy; information technology and working with others.  Combined with the relevant qualifications, soft skills can be crucial to an individual’s ability to get a job, keep it, and advance in the organisation.

With today’s competitive job market, employers want to hire individuals that go beyond the line of competency to that of potential.  Graduate recruiters are willing to train employees in the skills required to do a job, provided they have the soft skills to sustain and enhance the individual’s development.  

These basic competencies are vital because employers are aware that workers with receptive and influential soft skills are able to send and receive communication using active listening, awareness of non-verbal communication, oral communication, persuasiveness, problem solving, decision-making, time and stress management, responsibility and a cognitive approach to the exchange.  Therefore, these employees are likely to be dependable, resourceful, ethical, self-directed and have the ability to demonstrate effective communication for delivery of workplace products.  The result is a collaborative, productive, customer-focused work place that spends less time resolving problems and more time breaking records.

Students still tend to think a good degree is all that is required to guarantee career success.  To an extent this is be true, but it is important to remember that most graduate level jobs require soft skills in equal measure with academic ability.  For example, employees in technical fields such science and engineering need to have developed attributes that include communication and the ability to working as part of a team. 

Careers can also be developed by accumulating and transferring job skills from one context to another, by broadening the range of expertise they apply in each successive job, or by constantly seeking out novel and challenging situations.  Therefore, anyone who is worried about giving the impression of being a job hopper can actually use the experience to highlight the skills they have developed from a variety of sources.

Most graduates will have practiced and developed some these transferable skills during periods of work without taking into account its true value.  But as employers often look for more than a qualification, highlighting your soft skills may make the difference between two equally qualified candidates.
 

The soft skills most graduate employers are interested in include: 

• Communication - ability to communicate orally, in writing or via electronic means in a manner appropriate to the audience.
• Numeracy - competence and understanding of numerical data, statistics and graphs.
• Problem solving - thinking things through in a logical way in order to determine key issues. Creative thinking is also useful.
• Interpersonal Skills - ability to relate well to others and to establish good working relationships.
• Teamwork - being a constructive team member, contributing practically to the success of the team.
• Leadership - being able to motivate and encourage others, whilst taking the lead.
• Initiative - ability to see opportunities and to set and achieve goals.
• Adaptability/Flexibility - ability to handle change and adapt to new situations.
• Self-awareness - knowing your strengths and skills and having the confidence to put these across.
• Motivation/Commitment - having energy and enthusiasm in pursuing projects.

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