Soft Skills: Your Sure Way To Beat The Competition

The labour market is highly competitive and if you want to excel in it, you will first start the competition with yourself. To beat the competition is to become the best version of who you are.

Technical skills which you acquired through education are not what makes you the best of who you are, it is your soft skills. By becoming the best of who you are, you have automatically given yourself access to vocational excellence.

The ability to drive your professional skills with the right soft skills is what gives you an edge in the labour market. To become the best version of who you are, it all starts with soft skills development. 

Just like Mahatma Gandhi said, "In a gentle way, you can shake the world". What our society needs now is not just another set of professionals with the best technical skills, but more of those with the right mix of soft skills, who will help ease the destructive tension that is already weighing the labour market down. 

Soft skills also referred to as social or people skills are vital components of emotional intelligence, which when collaborated with your technical skills, give you the most competitive advantage you will ever need in the labour market.

It has always been the norm to believe that once you come out with a good grade from a higher institution, and are also well technically skilled, then your success in the labour market is sure. But the truth is that having good grades and being well technically skilled is very necessary but isn't enough. You need soft skills in order to have an edge over the competition if you want to secure a good job or be a pacesetter in entrepreneurship.

The editorial team of Indeed.com, the world's largest job website, wrote an article on the 10 best skills to include on a CV, and behold, 9 out of the 10 are soft skills. There is no hyping about those soft skills. The truth is that soft skills are what drives hard skills. Just as software drives the hardware.

One might ask, what's the big deal about this soft skill you are talking about? If you ask such a question, I will not blame you, because most times, our school curriculum says little or nothing to emphasize its importance on our career journey.

Because of this, most of us do not even know that there is another skill set that is even more essential to your career success than the ones you acquired through school, training, or certification programs.

Thank goodness to some student organizations who have taken the initiative of exposing students to the virtues of emotional intelligence. Students who have successfully developed their emotional intelligence, are the right candidates for any position in society that demands a substantial amount of soft skills for a coherent operation.

In a situation where two bright applicants from the same field of study are vying for the same job, the one that is good in soft skills will happily win the position. The reason is that employers are so much in need of employees that showcase a substantial amount of soft skills in them because they are the true assets of any enterprise.

Even if that person isn't the best with hard skills(skills acquired through education), employers know that on-the-job training can easily handle that, because soft skills need more dedication to be developed.

That's why it's advised that you start developing yours in the right direction starting now you're still in school. Our article "7 top skills you must develop to achieve vocational excellence" helps you understand better how these soft skills can boost your success in the labour market.

Employees that are good at soft skills are social, flexible, adaptive, customer-oriented, communicative, trustworthy, open-minded, leadership-oriented, and many others. They are the jewels of any enterprise.

So I think it will be in your best interest to start developing your soft skills now you're still in school, because the earlier you start doing that, the better you become. Our article "understanding your skills and how to benefit from them" helps you understand more about soft skills, hard skills, and how to benefit from the mix.

Meanwhile, our internship program was designed to help undergraduates gain real-time experience on vital soft skills that will help them excel in the labour market. To gain experience on those soft skills as it applies to the labour market through our stock management internship program, click HERE to apply.

"In a gentle way, you can shake the world"

                   ~Mahatma Gandhi