Soft Skills: what are they? Soft skills and competences

The transformation of the world of work that has been taking place for several years has resulted, among other things, in the so-called Soft Skills becoming decisive. Today, Soft Skills are considered to be necessary competences in order to be able to consider a professional profile as competitive. Hard Skills alone are no longer enough.

Soft Skills are individual skills that are increasingly valued in the work context, both by HR managers and employers. It is now well known, in fact, that the enrichment brought by an employee's psychological component is of equivalent importance to the employee's sector-specific technical competence (hard skills).

But what are soft skills? Let us go into a little more detail.

In this article we will give an overview of the main soft skills, after specifying what they are. We will evaluate together why they are so important in the corporate landscape and why they are so highly valued today.

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What are Soft Skills?

" Soft Skills' is an English term that can be translated into Italian as ' soft skills'. Soft skills, or transversal or behavioural skills, are defined as all individual skills that have an impact on the management of interpersonal relationships within a given social or working environment.

Soft skills correspond to all communication and interpersonal skills of the employee. In concrete terms, this means social intelligence in the broadest sense, i.e. social and communicative competence towards colleagues, but also towards suppliers and, in some cases, customers.

Underlying Soft Skills is a strong predisposition to emp athise with people, an ability to empathise, a certain flexibility and the ability to understand interpersonal dynamics.

Soft Skills vs. Hard Skills

Soft Skills are the inclinations or characteristics linked to the individual's personality. They are considered complementary to Hard Skills, or 'hard competences'.

Hard skills are defined as all skills that are strictly inherent to a specific profession. They can be defined as the technical skills and basic knowledge required to perform a specific job. Hard skills are generally learnt through schooling and work experience.

What are Soft Skills?

The main soft skills refer to the ability to work and manage one's own social skills. They are as follows:

• Communication skills, i.e. a person's ability to express him/herself fluently and eloquently both orally and in writing. Communication skills also refer to an individual's ability to present himself and his surroundings. In short: communication skills refer to the ability to express concepts and make oneself understood.
• Enthusiasm and motivation, i.e. the ability to take an interest and become fully involved in the activities performed. A positive attitude towards work is, in fact, essential for good performance.
• Creativity, i.e. the ability to react to given situations or to respond to given needs with inventiveness. It means channelling the imagination to enhance the creative ability of the mind and bend it to work purposes.
• Decision Making, i.e. the ability to make relevant decisions. It means being able to manage the decision-making process effectively, selecting a course of action from among several alternatives.
• Problem Solving, i.e. the ability to understand the scope of a specific problem and to solve it by proposing a relevant solution. The ideal attitude is proactive: active and practice-oriented.

👉 Usually, in job interviews, you are asked to describe a problematic situation you faced and how you reacted to it.

• Tenacity, i.e. the ability to withstand stress and cope with large amounts of work.
• Critical spirit, i.e. the ability to analyse a situation using a reflective approach, whereby one questions the validity of each proposition.
• Teamwork, i.e. the ability to fit in and collaborate within a team. Indeed, in the event that a human resource is to be placed within an already structured company context, it is useful to have an employee who knows how to adapt to the human environment without too many difficulties. Therefore, it is good that the newcomer is not only skilled in weaving quality human relations, but also in recognising and respecting the existing hierarchies in the workplace.
• Empathy, i.e. the ability to empathise with another person's state of mind or situation, the ability to understand the emotions and reactions of others.
• Adaptability, i.e. the ability to be flexible according to day-to-day business needs. In fact, it is easy for a business to undergo structural or strategic changes on a regular basis and, therefore, it is necessary to be able to adapt to changes quickly and responsively.
• Autonomy, i.e. the ability to perform assigned tasks with a certain degree of independence.

Caution! This does not mean that employees should never ask questions if they are unclear about a task or have not understood exactly how to perform a task. Instead, it means being able to self-regulate and govern themselves in ordinary or extraordinary situations.

• Sense of initiative, i.e., the ability to anticipate events by taking independent and innovative action, i.e., action that is steered in an unusual direction that is relevant to work.
• Organisation and planning, i.e. the ability to plan activities or set goals. Organisation and planning also concerns the identification of resources and the timing required to implement the programmes drawn up. It consists, in essence, of the ability to manage and functionally integrate the three variables of time, attention and energy.
• Self-development, i.e. the capacity for personal growth based on the analysis of one's own successes, mistakes, feedback received and one's own reflections.
• Customer orientation, i.e. the ability to understand one's target audience, its needs and requirements. In addition, it is the ability to respond to customer needs, taking a proactive and adaptive attitude. A fundamental part of orientation is competence in interacting with the customer: knowing how to address, how to accept and remedy criticism and complaints, as well as being able to persuade and convince.

☝ Soft skills are very important. However, it is not essential to possess necessarily established soft skills. In fact, it is good to bear in mind that soft skills can be trained. The important thing is to possess a predisposition, because it is possible to develop the skills over time during work.

In any case, the relevance of soft skills is quite multidisciplinary, in the sense that they are in principle skills that are useful in any kind of job (that is why they are called transversal skills).

However, of course, some soft skills are more relevant in certain types of work. For example, in digital remote working (Smart Working), self-discipline and autonomy, among others, will be particularly valued.

Soft Skills: why are they important in the professional sphere?

In a world increasingly geared towards safeguarding the psycho-physical integrity of the individual within the social environment, Soft Skills are a central element. In fact, they are a very important item within the CV itself and are considered with particular attention by HR managers and employers.

Today's companies, in fact, tend to increasingly recognise the contribution of a humanly competent employee who knows how to fit constructively into the team. It is, by now, an accepted fact that a pleasant working environment is one of the building blocks for the success of any business. A cohesive team, whose members are at ease with each other, works better and generally arrives at ideas, solutions for conflicts or important initiatives in a much more systematic way than employees who are tense and find the presence of certain colleagues fundamentally unpleasant.

In fact, a LinkedIn survey of HR professionals reported that respondents claim that the definition Soft Skills is too simplistic and does not do justice to the complexity of skills that fall under this definition.

From what emerged from the survey, 80 per cent of respondents claim that soft skills are central to ensuring business success. In fact, 89% of respondents described individuals lacking soft skills as the worst employees in their company. It is therefore clear that, nowadays, soft skills are more important than ever.

This is why it is advisable for a company to invest special attention in the recruitment process. While it is true that it is not easy to detect the presence of certain skills from only one, or a few, cognitive interviews, it is also true that it is worth sharpening the judgement skills of one's HR Managers. Soft skills, in fact, are, like the complementary hard skills, conditio sine qua non of business success.

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How to enhance soft skills in the curriculum vitae

So far, we have seen what soft skills are and why they are important in today's working environment. At this point, however, you may be wondering how to include soft skills in your CV in an appropriate way.

Let's see together what steps you need to take:

1. Read the job advertisement carefully. In fact, the Soft Skills required will not be mentioned in it, since, usually, job advertisements focus rather on the Hard Skills required. However, from a careful reading, it will be possible to guess and deduce the desired soft skills.
2. Take a look at your CV and analyse its appropriateness in relation to the advertisement being considered.
3. Explain the soft skills in your CV, if they are not already present, paying particular attention to emphasising the skills desired by the position of interest.
4. Prepare a motivation letter in which the soft skills mentioned in the CV are explained in detail. It is good, at this point, to bring examples to support your description.

And you, what do you think about Soft Skills? Which soft skills do you consider essential and why? Share your opinion with us by leaving a comment in the appropriate section! We will be more than happy to read your opinion and respond to your communication as soon as possible!