Soft Skills Vs Hard Skills
When building my team, whether it was the staff I employed full-time or whether it was seeking out service providers or suppliers, a major part of the decision process came down to the soft skills that the person possessed.
Being able to achieve both soft and hard skills was an absolute bonus.
Let’s look at the meaning and the difference between soft skills and hard skills and see some examples.
What are Soft Skills?
Soft skills are more personal traits and qualities that a person has and sometimes these cannot be taught. They generally form part of an individual’s personality or can be picked up through experience or practice. These are also often referred to as people skills or sometimes EQ – Emotional Intelligence.
Having a good set of soft skills that complements your hard skills makes you very employable. In fact, when recruiting for my business, it was the soft skills that were most important to me because I knew that no matter how good someone was in their technical abilities (hard skills) if they didn’t have common sense or had poor communication skills it would be detrimental to my business.
Soft Skills Examples:
Some of the top soft skills that I would always look out for were:
- Common Sense
- Street smart
- Communication & Body Language
- Strong Ethics
- Responsibility
- Team Player
- Problem Solving
- Empathy
- Good Manners
- Time Management
- Creative thinking
What are Hard Skills?
Simply put, hard skills are technical abilities that someone brings to the job. You can generally learn hard skills by taking courses or even by ‘learning on the job’.
Hard Skills Examples:
Some examples of Hard Skills are:
- Computer Skills
- Book Smart
- Academic qualifications
- The operation of Industry-specific machinery
- Bookkeeping
- Knowledge of foreign languages
- Graphic design & photo editing
- Website Building
- Marketing skills such as SEO, Google Analytics, Mail Chimp
So, what’s the difference between soft skills and hard skills and which is more important?
There is a big difference between soft skills and hard skills. Soft skills are what make someone more employable because they have good communication skills both verbal and non verbal and strong ethics and get along well with others. They know how to problem solve, take initiative and responsibility, and can work efficiently and effectively in a team environment. These sorts of employees become invaluable assets to your business. I would often refer to them as indispensable.
Soft Skills in the Workplace
It is important to understand the difference between soft skills and hard skills. Whilst it is essential to hire someone with the technical skills or hard skills that the job description requires, I believe it is more important to hire someone who has soft skills. These are the people who make a difference and contribute more to the success of any business.
I remember working overseas within an organisation that employed people from all corners of the world. One of the biggest challenges this organisation faced was trying to get all these people to work together coherently. Different cultures, different beliefs, different values. I remember having to request the same piece of information from twelve different people in my department, in 12 different ways. I would construct my emails so carefully, so each one of those twelve people were reading AND understanding the same thing.
Whilst everyone was highly qualified from an academic point of view (hard skills), most lacked the cross-culture communication skills that was so desperately needed. This was a “gap” that the organization identified and was very quick to offer in house courses in a bid to upskill the employees’ soft skills. It is easy to see why soft skills are so important in the workforce and it further highlights the difference between soft skills and hard skills.
Being able to employee staff with both soft and hard skills is an absolute bonus. If you manage, ensure you reward them well and ensure you are constantly upskilling and reskilling them. This forms part of your team building, which is the number one step in how to run a successful business as part of my 5-step guide.
