Understanding Your Skills And How To Benefit From Them
Most times we tend to believe that learning trendy skills in school, or through apprenticeship is just what we need to succeed in the labour market, but there is another set of skills that determine whether we can succeed or not with those skills learned through education.
And those skills are known as soft skills, and can also be referred to as social skills. They are among the basic building blocks of emotional intelligence, while the skills we acquire through education are known as hard skills.
Soft skills are what powers the hard skills, and that's why we tend to see two people that are both brilliant, studied the same course, have access to the same opportunity and one gets more successful than the other.
At times in such situations, we might say that it's destiny at play or the successful one is just lucky, but most times it's more than that. The ability to know the right place and the right people to work with goes a long way in determining how far we can go with our professional skills. And soft skills are what will help you in this context.
Soft skills are known as success skills because, without them, your hard skills can't take you far enough, no matter how good you are with them. But soft skills with the right proportion of hard skills are what take you to great heights. And that's why a manager with just a secondary school education controls a company filled with bachelor's and master's degree holders.
Therefore, as you are striving to acquire professional skills in school, don't forget also to develop your soft skills, because without them your chances to succeed in the labour market may be very narrow.
Soft skills:
Soft skills are the skills that determine how successful you will be with others in the workplace. And that's why employers value those skills more than the hard skills you acquired from school.
Your ability to become exceptional with the professional skills you acquired in school can only be made possible when you have the right soft skills to go with them.
Some of those soft skills are leadership skills, communication skills, time management skills, customer service skills, problem-solving skills, management skills, interpersonal skills, and many others.
Our article "7 top skills you must develop to achieve vocational excellence" tells you more about these soft skills and how to beat your path to vocational excellence with them.
Hard skills:
Hard skills also known as technical skills are those skills you acquired through schooling, training, or apprenticeship. They are your professional skills.
They are the skills that explain what you do for a living. A teacher acquires hard skills in teaching. A doctor acquires hard skills in medicine and so on. Your hard skill is your profession.
Therefore, it's good for you to know that, in order to achieve career excellence, you must be proficient in both your hard and soft skills. Developing one at the expense of the other isn't the right approach to the labour market. The labour market is very competitive, and if you can ever find a good space in it, then you must be skillful in both hard and soft skills.
As a student, while you focus your attention on developing your hard skills, don't forget that your success after graduation does not depend solely on the acquired skill and your certificate. You also need soft skills.
Soft skills once developed can be applied in any field of choice and can also be developed from any field of choice as well. In other words, it's a generic skill. So start developing your soft skills whenever you see an opportunity to do so.
To practically develop and experience how soft skills can be applied in the labour market through an internship program as a student, then click HERE to apply.
To learn more about the differences between hard skills and soft skills from indeed.com, the world's largest job website, visit: https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/hard-skills-vs-soft-skills
