Soft Skills - Core area you must work upon !!!

Soft skills refer to character and qualities of a person that helps him or her to communicate efficiently and effectively with everyone. The term itself is broad in nature. It comprises of numerous traits one must work upon and develop for personal and professional growth.  Hard skill refers to the knowledge and occupational skills of a person. Soft skills works as an complement to hard skills. A company always looks for employees who are good at both of them. Lot of times you may have wondered two employees having same education and work experience, but one is selected and not the other. Out of the many reason, soft skills can be a differentiating factor.

Hard skills are gained through education and skilled oriented work. Soft skills are something one develops through time with more of right mentor-ship, guidance, work experience and reading. . It can be read, but not necessary applied by everyone in a similar way. When it comes to interviews and also to appraise the performance of an employee, these two skills are the benchmark on which people are graded. That’s why, generally most of the companies have multiple rounds of interviews, specifically to test your hard and soft skills both.

So what are the soft skills that person needs one needs to possess or develop? The list is endless but some important one are the following:

Attitude towards work and team player:  

Every manager loves a person who is got a positive attitude when it comes to work, also your colleagues would love that. It creates a healthy environment for the team and the individual personally. One may be great at performing the work he is being allocated but you will also be judge how you help your team also who may be overloaded with work and make sure everyone leaves on time. They will return the favor back to you for sure.

Communication:

The way you communicate with the teams internally and your clients are really important. Communication can be both formally as well as informally through emails, over the phone and face to face. Good interpersonal relationship is a must when it comes to growth of the company as well yours. That’s why most of the companies have a client services team for external communication and human resource team for internal communication to help for better communication.

Time management skills:

Work is something that will never get over. Majority of the days it would always be more than the required hours that you need to put in daily. As a professional, you need to manage your time and work in terms of identifying what is important that requires to be done in next hour, end of the day or work that can be done the next day. If you don’t manage this effectively, you will end up being stressed and stretching long hours daily.

Flexibility and learning:

There would be instances where you may need to do multiple things at work due increased workload, too much attrition or people being on leaves. You need to be flexible, accept changes and take responsibility for all the work you do. There would be instance where you would require learning a specific skill set or educate yourself with knowledge to perform work, never shy away from learning it. It helps you to grow as a professional.

Stress Management and Criticism:

This is one of the core areas that separates most of the employees. Some people are good at handling stress and some are not. Best ways to manage stress is always write down and plan the amount of work you have for the day, week or month. Even after burdened with ample of work and all long hours you may be putting daily, you may be criticized for things you may be have not done it right, but are important. Learn from your seniors and identify why it was important to be done and move on. Never get angry when someone criticizes you, no one knows everything, learn where you going wrong and grow as a professional. Learning never stops, be it whatever age you are currently.

Some self explanatory soft skills:

Public Speaking, Presentation and Body Language and Listening, Dispute resolution skills,  Project management, Honest , friendly, patient, Respectable, Motivated, Dedicated and the list goes on, there is not end to it !!!!!

To be continued . . . .

Thanks and Regards,

Mustufa Petiwala