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Soft Skills as Important as Hard Skills
CHICAGO -- Don't skimp on soft skills when you write your resume. Fully 77% of employers believe those skills are just as important as hard skills and 16% say they're more important when they evaluate candidates for a job, a survey by CareerBuilder finds.
"Soft skills" are those intangible attributes associated with personality, such as a positive attitude, while "hard skills" are those learned to perform a specific job function and can be measured, such as operating a computer program.
"When companies are assessing job candidates, they're looking for the best of both worlds: someone who is not only proficient in a particular function, but also has the right personality," said Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder. "Along with responsibilities, it's important to highlight soft skills that can give employers an idea of how quickly you can adapt and solve problems, whether you can be relied on to follow through and how effectively you can lead and motivate others."
The top-10 most popular soft skills companies say they look for when hiring:
- Strong work ethic, cited by 73% of respondents.
- Dependability, 73%.
- Positive attitude, 72%.
- Self-motivation, 66%.
- Team-oriented, 60%
- Candidate is organized, can manage more than one priority at a time, 57%.
- Works well under pressure, 57%.
- Effective communicator, 56%.
- Flexibility, 51%.
- Confidence, 46%.
Haefner warns that it's not sufficient to just list soft skills when selling oneself to a potential employer. "Saying that you're a team player is not enough; you have to show it," she advised. "Provide an example of how you worked on a team to accomplish a particular goal. Provide an example of a high-pressure situation that you handled with ease. Try to make the intangible tangible."
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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