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Time was when hard skills alone were sufficient to ensure that one got a job and even further advanced in one’s chosen career. However, in a globalized and interconnected world, few employers would settle for a candidate who could bring to the table nothing more than his/her hard skills however good those hard skills are. Today, employers ensure that a candidate is equipped with the necessary soft skills to go with his/her hard skills before hiring him/her. But then, what are hard skills and soft skills? And how is “networking” a soft skill?
It is easy to define hard skills. Hard skills are trade or occupational skills. That is, one’s hard skills comprise one’s subject knowledge and expertise that help one to perform one’s job efficiently. Soft skills, on the other hand, defy easy definition. Often, what one gets as definitions of soft skills are vague and piecemeal. A quick look at the available definitions of soft skills gives one a broad outline as to what the term “soft skills” means. Soft skills are people skills. They involve interpersonal and communication skills. They also include one’s character traits and emotional intelligence quotient or EQ. In other words, soft skills are all about who one is rather than what one knows.
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