Communication works for those who work at it. It is the key factor that makes the working environment conducive. But, in job descriptions, the employers ask about the soft as well as hard skills. Have you noticed any job description? If not, open one on your cellphone. You will not find the words ‘soft skills or hard skills’ anywhere. Instead, they demand good linguistic, leadership, basic computer, the management or other tasks related skills. The reader has to distinguish each by his own. The following basic general definitions of soft and hard skills can help you do so.
Soft skills
By definition, soft skills are the personal traits that make a person’s thoughts, abilities and behaviour. Examples of soft skills include:
- Integrity
- Dependability
- Creativity
- Teamwork
- Leadership
- Adaptability
- Empathy
- Critical or analytical thinking
- Qualitative Analysis skills
Hard skills
In contrast, hard skills refer to technical knowledge. The common ways to get such skills are professional training, previous working experiences, education, and career development courses. Examples of hard skills include:
- Microsoft Office Skills
- Transferrable Skills
- Analytical Skills
- Administrative Skills
- Multitasking Skills
- Language Skills
- Employability Skills
Soft skills vs. hard skills
Though, after reading the definitions and exploring some examples, one can easily pick the differences between the two. Further, read the following paragraph to get a comprehensive comparison between both skills as well. An important factor that differentiates hard skills from soft skills is the way to gain or apply them in the workplace. Based on a rsearch done by a research paper writing service, hard skills are more difficult to get than soft. Any technical course, training or experience is vital to gain hard skills.
In contrast, most of the time, the person’s environment teaches soft skills. The trend of attending soft professional skills development courses is still not as common. The soft skills make the personality but, the hard skills make a career. The act of learning how to behave with the machines is a hard skill. Conversely, a learning process to know how to behave with humans is soft skills. To be simple, your habits at the workplace lies under soft skills, but practical expertise is the subject of hard skills.
After getting in-depth information about the two most common types of skills, it is the right time to explore which skills are more suitable for a professional career. In the remaining section, we will witness the role of a few soft as well as hard skills in a professional career one by one. Let’s talk about how a few soft skills impact the professional career first.
Impact of soft skills on a professional career
Soft skills, as described above, are effective in building a good relationship with colleagues. Becoming a professional all-rounder is only one aspect of career progression. But behaving well, respecting others and mutual understanding are ways to apply good soft skills in the workplace. As evidence, we will discuss the impact of creativity and teamwork on the professional career of an individual.
Creativity- A Soft skill
Creativity is an essential skill that helps the employees to see out of the box. A person who is creative can bring more innovative ideas than the less creative one. For career succession, we usually have two approaches. First, stick to your past knowledge, which means not learning more to succeed. But the second one is always being trendy and receptive to learn what will come next. Of course, the latter is the one to find new ways for longevity and opportunities. In the light of the importance of creativity as a soft skill, we can conclude a fact. The fact is soft skills can empower an employee with an organizational context.
Teamwork- A soft skill
As a representative of soft skills, teamwork is a skill to strengthen someone’s weaknesses. Teamwork is an interpersonal skill with hundreds of professional career benefits. Is your brain not in a state to receive a sudden change in an organization? Are you suffering from panic attacks? Could you not hear the official announcement? No matter what type of professional shortcoming you and your colleagues encounter, the solution to a majority of the professional shortcoming is soft skill-teamwork.
To put it another way, teamwork is a key to becoming a helping hand for others. Indeed, it will also help you to get professional support. Thus, team working is the easiest way to attain professional excellence. As a whole, it will not be wrong to say that soft skills help build good relations. It helps get rid of a difficult situation even on small tasks like article writing. It improves problem-solving abilities hence, productivity. So, as a big picture, it is effective to improve the professional career.
Impact of hard skills on a professional career
On one side, soft skills help an individual to enjoy his professional duties. But, without hard skills, professional sustainability will be at great risk. Remember, the hard skills are highly field-specific. Let’s take an example of a software engineer. The two most important hard skills for a software engineer are as follows:
Computer programming and coding
Though the primary duties of a software engineer are computer programming and coding. But, a person cannot get a programmer’s job without having the necessary technical knowledge about it. In many organizations, before hiring, employers ask candidates to showcase their hard skills and technical knowledge. In this scenario, the best candidate is the one who expressed the most skilled version of him. The one who lags in hard skills can never get a chance to even showcase the soft skill (in an interview). As a result, getting knowledge about the Mean, C#/.Net, Python, Java and other programming language is necessary for them.
Object-oriented design
Similarly, object-oriented design is another example of hard skills for software engineers. The four key principles of object-oriented design include:
- Abstraction
- Encapsulation
- Inheritance
- Polymorphism
Without getting command of these four principles, you cannot ensure stability at the workplace.
In conclusion, both hard as well as soft skills have deep impressions on professional careers. The hard skills help an individual to sustain for longer, while soft traits help them to create a healthy environment around them.