What is the first thought when you listen about the term “Soft Skills”? In a very simple terms, soft skills deals about a person’s behaviour that he displays in different situations.
What are Soft Skills?
Soft Skills are not about the knowledge we possess but the behaviour we display. Soft Skills are a combination of people skills, communication skills, character traits, personal attributes, career attributes etc. along with the social and environment intelligence that enables a person to find his suitable environment for work, develop his attitude and achieve his goals with required hard skills.
Soft Skills also includes the capability of effectiveness in team works and time management in terms of a business firm.
History of soft skills
The term soft skills was first coined in the late 1960s by the U.S Army. It meant that any skills that doesn’t require the use of machinery. The US Army realised that many training activities were the part of this soft skills which mainly included motivating the soldiers, problem-solving ability within the soldiers and leadership qualities.
In 1972, a US Army training manual began the formal usage of the term Soft Skills.
Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey famously stated that social intelligence, rather than qualitative intelligence, defines humans. Many industries today give prominence to the soft skills of their employees.
This was the history about how the term soft skills initially formed.
Why are they important?
Soft skills play an important role in everyone’s life. Soft Skills are very useful in resume writing, interviewing and communicating with the people. We can often see job-hiring posts where there is a point saying “required or desired soft skills”. These soft skills are very useful in customer based jobs like tele-callers where people have to maintain good relationship through their behaviours and good communication towards the customers. It needs several soft skills to communicate with the customers in a very polite and provide humble services to the customers.
Not only in the professional life, Soft Skills plays an equally important role in personal life too. It requires good communication skills that builds your friends network and also helps to increase your potential partners.
Hence, soft skills are important in both professional and personal life.
It has become mandatory that every employee in the present scenario should be good in soft skills. Every manager looks for an employee who has the ability of creativity, critical thinking, good communication skills, problem solving, adaptability and a very good work ethics. At present times, it is very important to ensure that a person should have these soft skills in him/her.
Types of soft skills:
As discussed earlier, soft skills are of many types. All put together makes a person more responsible and helps improve his ability to be suitable for any type of job.
Soft skills includes:
Adaptability towards working environment.
Good and proper communication.
Creative thinking.
Problem solving.
Critical thinking.
Work ethic.
Dependability etc.
How to get soft skills?
Unlike hard skills, soft skills can’t be learned but allows people to learn about others. Soft skills are similar to people’s insights and emotions. These skills are much harder to learn. One should learn to adapt to it. Soft skills are even more difficult to measure or value.
If observed, some job training programmes include soft skills training as they know the value of these skills. They may discuss so that job seekers know the value of it. Including soft skills such as creative thinking, problem solving ability etc. in your resume increases your value for the job. It earns you some respect.
Soft skills isn’t something that can be taught like a lesson tor a story to anyone. For example, if you are working in some retail industry, you would have solved some issue of customers by listening to their problems. This would have helped you to develop your problem-solving and good communication skills.
We see many people who have the right academic skills, but lack in soft skills – be it confidence levels, public speaking, grooming or the ability to crack interviews.
We at Infimind Educare Foundation help people overcome these barriers through our Soft Skills training programme.
Key Points:
In very simple terms, soft skills deals about a person’s behaviour that he displays in different situations.
Soft Skills are a combination of people skills, communication skills, character traits, personal attributes, career attributes etc. along with the social and environment intelligence that enables a person to find his suitable environment for work, develop his attitude and achieve his goals with required hard skills.
It also includes the capability of effectiveness in team works and time management in terms of a business firm.
Soft Skills are very useful in resume writing, interviewing and communicating with the people.
Soft skills are important in both professional and personal life.
Every manager looks for an employee who has the abilities of creativity, critical thinking, good communication skills, problem solving, adaptability and work ethic.
Including soft skills in your resume application increases your value for the job.
We at Infimind Educare Foundation help people overcome these barriers through our Soft Skills training programme.