SOFT SKILLS

One of the fashionable terms hovering around these days is ‘soft skills’. “Skill is the ability to do something well”. Some define skill as a ‘cluster of personality traits’. Earlier companies used to measure in terms of hard skill (intelligent quotient) for recruiting a person. These included knowledge in a particular field, experience in working on a set of machines, ability to apply theoretical knowledge to practical applications, logical and analytical reasoning etc.


Most of these skills are included in academic curriculum. Therefore, an academically successful student was expected to succeed in life and career too. Due to technological advancements, economy has brought about a phenomenal shift in the skills required for a person to succeed in career.

Typically, soft skills can be defined as the skill that enables an individual to engage and interact effectively with others, obtain acceptance, build consensus and provide assistance, leadership and direction. Hard skills are easy to observe, quantify and measure and thus easy to train and acquire. However, soft skills- being more behavioral in nature- are a result of various influences and interactions one has had in his or her life since childhood. Hence these influences have both positive and negative impact on the person by the time they reach employability. Therefore, soft skills training include a lot of unlearning and relearning issues.

Majority are in misconception that both soft skills and English communication are same. This is not really true. Communication skills are a part of soft skills. Soft skill facilitate individual to fulfill his or her responsibilities in an effective way possible both at work and at home.

Most of the companies look for following skill set before entering or at the time of recruiting staff: first and foremost is the ability to learn at a faster pace, adapting to the cultural diversities and team work, able to grasp the concepts and be ready to handle a team or a project and aligning his or her goals with the companies goals. Business conferences are the call of the day; hence employee should be good at oral as well as written communication skill. Last but not the least, organizations often place faith and give the employee substantial responsibilities very early in their career.

Now we can see a 26 year old handling a team of 25+ head count and generating decent revenues in crores. To achieve this integrity, vision, ethics plays a far-reaching role.

The first step in developing effective soft skills is to wipe out the negative impressions and learn the positive traits. Soft skills take significant time to learn and absorb in the blood, therefore patience is needed to expect the desired results. And practical application is the call of the day towards estimating one’s understanding and impacts.