Increasingly, employers include soft skills in their requirements, next to the list of hard skills and years of experience. These are skills that facilitate effective cooperation not only in private but also professional environments. Among the most famous are:

• Communication skills
• Creativity
• Flexibility
• Assertiveness
• Independence
• Ability to work in a group
• Time management
• Dynamism of action

Soft skills are a very important area in assessing the attractiveness of candidates, especially for sales, marketing and managerial positions. But not only. The popularization of the trend of crossing many fields means that communication skills in the case of a programmer also turn out to be an advantage. It may happen that two candidates with the same qualifications and work experience will compete only with soft skills. Of course, a lot depends on the industry in which the company specializes. However, the ability to sell yourself always pays off. This is what we do in every job interview, we market ourselves as a suitable employee.

So should we include soft skills in our CV? Should we leave space for their presentation during a tête-à-tête meeting? Credibility is important for any curriculum vitae. You should not score skills that you will not be able to defend during a routine conversation. Well, we should definitely brag about our creativity, but only when we are not afraid of questions about the number of leaves on the tree. Self-esteem is inherently subjective. When determining your soft advantages, you can use psychological tests (from a well-verified source!). It is also worth seeking a very accurate and valuable opinion from your loved ones. By asking a trusted person for an honest list of features that describe us, we gain invaluable, objective information. In such consultations, it is better to omit our mother, who will always take us to the highest level.

We can develop soft skills. Not everyone is destined to be an early innovator, but creativity can also be learned. There are numerous scientific publications, training courses and books that will help us with this.

However, nothing strengthens competence like practice. Additional activities are a great place to practically acquire soft skills. It is worth remembering them during your education. Involvement in student organizations, volunteering, non-governmental projects and soft training are fantastic for soft development – we train the ability to work in a group, communicate, time management (e.g. reconciling various duties, i.e. multitasking). Monitoring and motivation can turn everyday, even trivial, duties into permanent training. Planning the day, talking carefully to people, keeping yourself accountable to deadlines, spotting mistakes and fixing them. Each of these small activities shapes the most desirable personal characteristics.

It is estimated that in about 10 years, over 75% of employees will be people born in the 1980s and 1990s, i.e. the famous generations Y and Z. Such a generational change will significantly influence the formation of a new canon of competences. Forecasts resulting from the American Future Work Skills 2020 report point to the following future competencies:

• The level of social and emotional intelligence, i.e. broadly understood interpersonal skills, allowing for the correct interpretation of behavior, subliminal messages and emotions.
• The ability to combine and use knowledge from many fields, i.e. the so-called cross-fertilization (e.g. marketer with knowledge in the areas of programming, graphics and sociology).
• Ability to work in an international, multicultural environment, related to both understanding different rules in culture and management.
• The ability to appropriately filter, select and present news, i.e. working in the midst of information noise that bombards us with the same intensity with what is valuable and what is completely useless.

The above list expands the scope of the importance of soft skills. The times have come when a master’s degree and knowledge of a foreign language are commonplace. Therefore, what comes to the fore is not the knowledge itself, but the soft skills of its dynamic use. Therefore, when planning your professional career, at every stage you should remember that the environment is the building block of key soft skills of future employees.

Source:https://poradnikpracownika.pl/-czy-kompetencje-miekkie-sa-zdrowiem-do-sukcesu

Supported by Norway through Norway Grants 2014-2021, in the frame of the Programme “Social Dialogue – Decent Work”.