What are Soft Skills? Top 10 Soft Skills for Career Growth

Do you often wonder what it is that makes a particular employee in a team stand out among colleagues and seniors? Why is it that among two equally knowledgeable people, one can usually thrive more successfully than the other? The answer to both of these questions probably is the presence of an additional set of skills in addition to job knowledge and skills. These are the skills we commonly call ‘soft skills’.

But what are soft skills? How can one use it to grow one's career? Which soft skills should one focus on more? These are a few of the questions that we will answer in this blog, along with clearing all your concepts about soft skills. Keep reading to know more!!

What are Soft Skills? Definition and Meaning

Soft skills encompass a variety of skills in addition to technical knowledge and skills that help an individual to interact and thrive better in a group setting, especially the workplace.

Soft skills can be defined as the set of skills apart from core technical knowledge and skills of an occupation that helps a person to thrive in the workplace through interaction and relations with others.

Video Source: Skillopedia

So soft skills are general skills, irrespective of the job or level of seniority that help a person to interact and relate to others more effectively. However, soft skills are not only limited to interaction with others, they also include skills that help a person to function better at an individual level in the job.

Some examples of soft skills include problem-solving ability, communication skills, team spirit, decision-making, stress management, time management, etc.

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Top 10 Soft Skills for Enhanced Your Career In 2024

If hard skills can lay the path for your career escalation, soft skills can help you to improve the quality of your career and relations with your colleagues and seniors. Some key soft skills are looked for in candidates during hiring as well as help an employee to improve professional performance after selection.

Here we have elaborated on the top 10 soft skills that can be useful in career growth in today’s professional landscape.

1. Communication skills

Communication skills are one of the most essential soft skills not just in the workplace but in every life situation. When in the workplace, one is constantly required to communicate ideas, opinions, and information to others, be it colleagues, team leaders, or seniors.

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Efficient communication skills help you to communicate your ideas and inputs more articulately, honestly, and genuinely, without hurting the sentiments of anyone. Good communication skills are also central to forming cordial and positive professional relationships in the workplace. Moreover, they help to improve your client relations and success rates too.

Top examples of communication skills include:

• Ability To Speak Well (Eloquence)
• Ability To Listen Attentively
• Non-verbal communication Skills (E.G. Through Body Language, Gestures Etc.)
• Ability To Give Constructive Feedback
• Accept Constructive Criticism Etc.

2. Creativity

Top companies and organizations thrive mainly because they regularly come up with creative solutions to problems and innovative services and products. Thus, creativity is one of the essential soft skills needed in any job position or job role. A creative approach to problem-solving and creative ideas are useful in all job domains ranging from engineering, management, and marketing to liberal arts.

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Corporate firms and companies today look for candidates with a creative mindset and approach to company problems so that innovative as well as feasible solutions are devised that will help in business growth and maximum performance and profits.

Examples of creativity in problem-solving include:

• Being Able To Think Out Of The Box
• Being Able To Come Up With Innovative Solutions
• Adapting Solutions As Per The Need Of The Hour Etc.

3. Problem Solving & Conflict Resolution

The ability to solve problems in the organizational setup is important to come up with feasible solutions that help to resolve the concern at hand as well as ultimately work towards company growth. Problem-solving ability is also needed to be able to devise solutions to new concerns or company needs that may arise during a project or task. Problem-solving ability helps to set you apart from a team as well as help improve your position in the team.

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Similarly, conflict resolution is a closely related skill. In many professional settings, irrespective of your field or job position, you will be faced with a conflict situation, whether between colleagues, between a team and management, or between two or more conflicting decisions. The ability to resolve conflicts will then help arrive at effective solutions as well as dissolve the negative ambiance that may be created due to conflict.

Examples of problem-solving ability and conflict resolution include:

• Ability To Understand The Nature Of The Problem As Well As The Needed Solution
• Weighing Out Various Alternative Solutions
• Evaluating Risks In A Particular Approach
• Coming Up With The Most Viable Solution
• Communicating Your Reasons To The Team
• Negotiating And Helping To Find A Common Ground Etc.

4. Analytical & Critical Thought

Analytical and critical thought help you to find solutions to problems that others may not be able to arrive at. Moreover, they help you to carefully analyze a solution, scrutinize all aspects involved in a problem, weigh out the stakes involved, identify loopholes in plans of action, and accordingly modify them as per the need.

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They are especially helpful in career domains that require high-stakes decisions, careful planning, and strategizing such as engineering, medicine, management, law, etc.

Examples of critical and analytical ability include:

• Understand the Nature of Problems
• Identify Loopholes as well as Strengths of Plans
• Modify Problems and Plans of Action
• Critically Appraise Solutions
• Evaluate Stakes Involved in a Solution etc.

5. Team Orientation

Team orientation is one of the most essential interpersonal skills needed to be successful in the modern workplace. In most organizations (or rather life situations), you cannot work solely on an individual basis. Your work and performance have implications on that of others while the actions of others affect your work too. So you will find yourself in team situations often.

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Being able to function well in a team is an important skill, maintaining the spirit of a team task, and delivering collective results through goal fulfillment are the need of the hour in corporate and other organizational setups, and can help you to develop cordial relationships with your team as well as grow your career through networking.

Some examples of team orientation and related skills include:

• Ability to Insubordinate Personal Goals and Agendas
• Focusing on Team Goals
• Being Cooperative with Team Members
• Open and Genuine Communication about Ideas and Opinions
• Collective Decision-Making
• Collaborative Approach Rather than Individual Approach etc.

6. Adaptability

With the constantly changing and evolving nature of professional fields, it is a need of the hour to have a flexible and adaptive approach to problem-solving and strategizing. During major projects and job duties, problems or concerns requiring a change of strategy may be needed.

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In such situations, an adaptive approach to problem-solving and decision-making that is responsive to the situational needs of the company is important. Adaptability and responsiveness to change is a key soft skill that helps an organization to thrive and grow its business and scope in today’s VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) society.

Examples of an adaptive approach include:

• Being Responsive to the Changing Situations
• Understanding How to Change One’s Solution as per the Need of the Hour
• Evaluating Alternative Solutions with Their Feasibility
• Being Updated With Changes in Your Relevant Field
• Having a Creative Approach to Problem-Solving etc.

7. Work Ethic

Maintaining and respecting the work ethic is a basic professional soft skill that can help in maintaining a positive image in front of colleagues and seniors as well as contribute significantly to preserving a healthy, decorous, and professional culture at the workplace.

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Respecting work ethics is an important area evaluated for hiring and recruitment because hirers and selectors consider how well you fit with the organizational culture as well as if you would respect the company policies and ethics or not as an employee in the future. Hence, working on your work ethic is important for a successful and cordial professional life.

A few examples of work ethics in a professional setting include:

• Discipline
• Decorum
• Respect for & Obedience of Company Policies
• Avoiding Insubordination
• Maintaining Professional Boundaries between Colleagues
• Respecting Workplace Diversity
• Maintaining Confidentiality of Company Information
• Protecting Company Property etc.

8. Time Management

Effective time management is needed for meeting company deadlines, delivering concrete results within a time frame as well as ensuring that all company members are performing their job duties regularly and on time. Thus, time management is an important soft skill to possess from the perspective of an employee as well as the company as a whole.

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Companies as well as individual employees need to set clear realistic, achievable goals that can be measured, to achieve them in a particular time frame. Time management ensures that company and individual employee goals are being met on a timely basis and that time is not being wasted on other activities by employees.

Some skills related to effective time management include:

• Evaluation of Approximate Time Needed to Accomplish a Task
• Planning Out Activities in Advance
• Setting Realistic and Achievable Goals and Deadlines
• Maintaining a Focused Approach towards Goal Achievement
• Dividing a Major Task into Subtasks etc.

9. Decision-Making Skills

The ability to make sound and reasonable decisions can make all the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful company endeavor. At various stages in your career, you will need to make career decisions, even in your current job, you will face situations where you will inevitably have to make decisions regarding work-life balance, task order priority, expressing a particular opinion, etc.

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So, being able to make logical, feasible, and effective decisions that will yield successful results for the employee and the company at large is a skill one needs to master today. Decision-making ability becomes even more important if you have a leadership position in a company such as at the team leader level, middle to top managerial level, and executive level.

Some of the skills related to effective decision-making ability include:

• Ability to Identify All Possible Courses of Action
• Ability to Weigh and Evaluate These Alternatives
• Ability to Come Up with Logical and Feasible Decisions
• Ability to Make Quick but Efficient Decisions
• Take Decisions Considering Broader Company Goals rather than Short-Term Goals etc.

10. Negotiation and Persuasion

Negotiation and persuasion skills are useful for not only articulating your ideas well but also for convincing others to buy them. They can be especially helpful in careers that require frequent interaction with and persuasion of clients, e.g. in marketing and sales jobs, HRM jobs, counseling jobs, hospitality jobs, etc.

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Negotiation and persuasion ability can also be helpful to persuade your leader or seniors to be on board with your ideas and plans of action for a task, during increments and so on.

Some skills related to negotiation and persuasion ability include:

• Confidence in Your Opinion and Words
• Being Genuine and Not Purely Manipulative
• Ability to Arrive on a Common Ground
• Being Polite but Convincing
• Backing Your Opinions/Ideas With Research etc.

So, as can be seen, many important soft skills can be helpful in your career or along your professional journey. It is as important to focus on soft skills before and during a job, as they help you to grow and enhance your career and professional relationships along the way.

Soft Skills vs Hard Skills

Soft skills and hard skills are two of the most commonly used terms in the domains of hiring and placement, human resource management, and the corporate world. But before getting to know specific soft skills and hard skills, it is important to know what the two terms mean. So, without further ado, let's understand the difference between hard skills and soft skills.

Soft Skills	Hard Skills
Soft skills are the non-technical skills that are useful for efficient occupational performance.	Hard skills are the technical knowledge, skills, and expertise that help a person to thrive in a particular profession.
These include the general skills irrespective of profession or one’s position in their career.	These skills vary from one profession to another.
These include the skills relating to effective self-management as well as interaction with others.	These include the skills and technical expertise that help to perform the job functions effectively.
Examples of soft skills include problem-solving ability, decision-making ability, creativity, analytical skills, team orientation, etc.	Hard skills would vary from one job to another but examples include mathematical skills, spatial skills, mechanical skills, etc.

So, soft skills will help you thrive generally at any stage of your career and establish a positive image of yourself to others working with you. On the other hand, hard skills help you to escalate in your career as with experience, your technical expertise also grows, helping you grab better job opportunities.

Importance of Soft Skills: Why Do You Need Soft Skills

Soft skills play a central role in enhancing your career and complement your hard skills for the job. They are important for career development and your overall professional and personal success in many ways.
 

Here are a few reasons that make soft skills very important in our lives.

1. Soft Skills Help You Grab Excellent Job Opportunities

Soft skills are a need of the hour if you want to develop a good professional network and explore the best job opportunities. Skills such as networking and interpersonal communication help you not only develop a strong professional network through which you can explore the best career opportunities, but recruiters of big companies and for top job positions actively look for your soft skills and abilities in addition to your technical knowledge.

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So, soft skills are one of the keys to cracking top job opportunities and growing your career, and you need to place active emphasis on them in addition to your hard skills.

2. Soft Skills Help to Set You Apart in a Job Interview

As already stated, recruiters in the professional domain today not only want potential candidates to have a host of necessary job skills but also possess important soft skills that will help to build an efficient team as well as grow the organization. Most companies in the modern workplace function from a human resource-oriented perspective which requires that the employees not only possess the necessary technical expertise but also the interpersonal and individual skills that help to create a professional environment conducive to the growth of all.

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For this, hirers and recruiters carefully assess your soft skills along with your technical knowledge in a job interview. If you are adept at your interpersonal and professional skills, then it will help you to establish your ground as well as stand out as a strong candidate among other applicants. So, focusing on your soft skills can help you get leverage over your contemporaries in job interviews.  

3. Soft Skills Help You Shine in a Team

As an employee, especially in the corporate sector, you may often find yourself in group situations where you have to work with your colleagues in a team to meet deadlines and goals. Among such tasks is also the implicit goal of being able to work in a team successfully but shine out from the rest at the same time.

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But what is it that helps you to shine out from the rest on a shared task? It is your soft skills that determine how well you can perform in a team, collaborate with others, lead the team, and deliver outputs. So, soft skills are very important as they help you establish firm ground during team tasks, shine out to your seniors, and make your way to promotions and better job appraisals as well. 

4. Soft Skills Improve Your Relations with Colleagues

Not only from a careeristic perspective, soft skills also help you to improve your interpersonal relations with others. They help you work better in teams, establish cordial and positive professional relationships with colleagues and seniors, as well as lead others more effectively (in case you are a team or unit leader), all of which will consequently help to deliver better professional outcomes.

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So, from a social and professional perspective, soft skills can help you and your team thrive as well as deliver better, innovative, and creative results that will help the company grow its business.

5. Soft Skills Complement your Hard Skills

Soft skills are very important in the professional domain in that they help to complement and support your hard skills. Most employees possess the necessary technical knowledge and skills needed to perform the job roles, but soft skills such as time management, professionalism, team orientation, etc. help to support the hard skills and deliver actual results of value to the company.

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So, in complementing hard skills, soft skills help you deliver a variety of job tasks and climb the ladder of your career.

6. Soft Skills Also Warrant Personal Growth

Soft skills like time management, professionalism, adaptability, analytical ability, etc. are essential not only from the point of view of your career but also from the perspective of personal growth and fulfillment, as they promote helpful habits and practices that help you to grow your personal skills, abilities, and interpersonal relations with others.

For example, time management is not only helpful in meeting work deadlines effectively but also in managing your time in your personal life, thereby fostering a helpful habit.

7. Soft Skills Warrant Organisational Growth

Soft skills help in the overall better performance of individual employees, teams, departments, and consequently the organization. Effective soft skills help to foster good interpersonal relationships within professional boundaries among employees, improve the team spirit, help to develop a healthy organizational culture and thereby lead to the growth of business of the company.

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Moreover, soft skills in employees are also conducive to improved professional performance, which means that the employees come up with better solutions, creative business ideas, and better strategies to grow the business and deliver results.

8. Soft Skills Can Be Trained but not Automated

With different arenas of jobs getting taken over by automation and technology, many job domains have eliminated the need for human assets. But soft skills set humans apart from machines, and their role cannot be fulfilled by machines.

As a result, even though soft skills can be developed in humans with training and practice, they can never be taken over completely by automated systems anytime in the future, and their role remains unquestioned and essential.

9. Soft Skills Help to Make a Good Leader

From the perspective of leadership, being an efficient leader requires many skills, of which one of the most essential is interpersonal skills. A good leader in an organization should be able to connect with the employees as well as motivate and inspire them, manage them, and lead them toward goal fulfillment.

All these aspects require soft skills such as team orientation, problem-solving ability, communication skills, etc. which will help a leader to guide the team and ultimately the organization towards better performance.

So, soft skills have a hidden but very important role to play in any organization or group as well as for an individual as it is beneficial towards personal and organizational growth.

Types of Soft Skills

Some top soft skills can help you to thrive in the workplace or elsewhere. These skills can be categorized as belonging to mainly 3 categories, all of which have been explained in detail below with relevant examples.
 
 
1. Personal Soft Skills

This category includes the soft skills that are beneficial and practiced at a more individual level and can help a person to thrive as well as manage work better. While all soft skills are beneficial at the personal level, these soft skills are also practiced at a more personal level.

Examples of personal soft skills include:

• Time Management
• Analytical Ability
• Adaptability
• Critical Thinking Skills
• Creativity

2. Interpersonal Skills

This includes the class of soft skills that help a person to interact with others more effectively and positively. Interpersonal skills are a very important aspect of soft skills and are especially relevant in the workplace as employees are frequently required to interact with colleagues and work in teams.

Interpersonal skills help you to communicate with others effectively, present your ideas, form cordial relationships with others as well as increase the trust and dependability an organization has on you. Moreover, if your job requires you to interact with clients regularly, interpersonal skills can be the key to successful client relations and ultimately better professional outcomes.

Examples of interpersonal skills include:

• Team Orientation
• Communication Skills
• Ability To Listen, Cooperative Mentality
• Negotiation And Persuasion Skills
• Leadership Ability Etc. 

3. Professional Skills

While personal and interpersonal soft skills are also important from a professional perspective, professional skills include those soft skills that help an employee maintain the ethos and professional ambiance of the workplace and contribute positively to the organizational culture.

Examples of this category include:

• Professionalism
• Abiding By Company Policies
• Team Orientation
• Ethical And Conscientious Work Behaviour
• Commitment To The Company etc.

Soft Skills for Resume

When it comes to including particular soft skills in your résumé, you should take some factors into account. Here we will give you a quick and easy guide about how to effectively include the right set of soft skills in your résumé that will help you to shine out from other potential job candidates.

When you are including soft skills or deciding upon which soft skills to include in your résumé, you should keep in mind the nature of the job you are applying to and accordingly select the skills that help to convey that you are a perfect fit for the job.

For example, if you are applying to a job that requires frequent interaction with clients and colleagues, then you should focus on soft skills like team orientation, and communication ability; if you are applying to a sales or marketing job role, you should emphasize your negotiation, communication and persuasion abilities; if you are applying to a job role that requires careful technical expertise, you can focus on your analytical skills, attention to detail, critical ability, etc.

Here are a few of the top skills to include in your resume: 

Top skills to include in your resume
Communication Skills	Leadership Quality
Analytical Skills	Interpersonal Abilities
Critical Thinking Skills	Organisational Skills
Attention to Detail	Decision-making Skills
Team Orientation	Adaptability
Ability to Work in Groups	Problem-solving Skills
Negotiation and Persuasion Skills

 While mentioning these above skills in your resume, you should consider the ones that are relevant to the particular job role that you are seeking, as already exemplified above.

Here are a few ways in which you can mention soft skills in your resume:

1. Make a Separate Section for Soft Skills

Many modern résumé templates offer you a separate segment in your résumé dedicated to your soft skills and interpersonal abilities. In this section, you can mention the various soft skills that you feel are relevant for the particular job position. A good idea is to focus on the skills that the company recruiters mention in the job requirements.

This will help you to communicate to the recruiters that you are an apt candidate for the job and can serve the role efficiently.

2. Incorporate Your Soft Skills into Your Hard Skills

A good way to communicate your soft skills to the company employers without directly stating them is to incorporate them into your hard skills. You can do this by including examples of effective team management, organizational abilities, leadership quality, etc. in your work experience and accomplishments.

Here are a few examples:

• Instead of saying “responsible for XYZ team”, express your job responsibility as “Managed, Interacted, and Integrated All Responsibilities and Functions of XYZ Team”.
• Instead of Writing “Managed Project ABC”, express it as “Strategised, Planned, Implemented and Met Deadlines for Project ABC By Integrating All Team Functions and Roles”.
• Instead of Writing “Handling Sales of XYZ Division”, Express it as “Managing, Meeting and Persuading Clients in Division XYZ to Invest in Company Product and Maintain Positive Client Relations”.

3. Use Active and Engaging Verbs to Describe Your Soft Skills

When mentioning your job responsibilities or soft skills in the résumé, you should try to use active and engaging verbs like “develop”, “engage”, “maintain”, “integrate”, “lead” etc. instead of simple verbs like “handle”, “responsible”, “sell” etc.

This is recommended because it helps you to convey to the potential employer that you are a person who takes an active lead in various professional situations as well as like to take initiative towards action, creating a positive first impression.

4. Support Your Claims with Your Job Responsibilities

It is important to back your claims about the possessed soft skills with evidence in the form of job responsibilities and professional accomplishments. So, irrespective of the soft skills that you mention on your résumé, it is important to ensure that your mentioned job roles and responsibilities are consistent with them.

For example, if you mention a soft skill like attention to detail and commit a grammatical or spelling error in your résumé, it reflects an inconsistency between your claim and your actual potential as a professional.

Hence, you must pay careful attention while mentioning soft skills on your résumé and ensure that you support them accordingly by mentioning relevant job responsibilities and accomplishments.

Top Soft Skills in the Corporate World

When it comes to the valued soft skills in the world of the corporate sector, interpersonal as well as individual soft skills that can lead to company growth take the central role. Professional soft skills are understandably a key aspect as well.

If you are an employee in the corporate sector or someone who is looking to explore your job options in the corporate domain, certain soft skills are highly valued by professionals. These skills, whether highlighted in your résumé or through your past professional experiences and accomplishments, can be very beneficial for your professional profile and provide you leverage over your contemporaries.

So, which are the top soft skills that can help you set your best foot forward for a corporate job? Here we have curated a list of the most valued soft skills in the corporate world:

Top soft skills
Communication Skills	Work Ethic
Listening Ability	Effective Problem-Solving
Optimistic Attitude	Decision-Making Ability
Leadership Ability	Critical & Analytical Skills
Adaptability & Responsiveness to Change	Conflict Resolution
Creativity & Innovation	Professionalism
Team Orientation	Emotional Intelligence
Time Management Ability	Persuasion & Negotiation Skills
Discipline	-

The skills mentioned above are beneficial to corporate employees in various domains of professions. They help corporate employees to

Corporate employees in various domains
Communicate with clients and colleagues more effectively	Take Crucial Decisions More Easily
Relate to your corporate employees more efficiently and genuinely	Devise Innovative and Creative Solutions to Problems
Form Cordial Relationships with Clients and Colleagues	Critically Analyse Plans and Projects
Network More Effectively	Maintain a Work Ethic and Contribute to an Optimum Work Environment
Manage your Deadlines Effectively	Thrive in the Corporate Setting

So, it is important to highlight the various soft skills that you possess, whether through your résumé, your job interview, or your past professional record. Soft skills can help set you apart in a crowd and grow your corporate career as they support your hard skills.

Soft Skills for Education

In the field of education, both students and teachers need to possess certain soft skills that help them to function better and thrive in the educational situation. The role of individual soft skills are essential for students while teachers need both interpersonal and individual skills to perform their job role more efficiently.

Some of the important soft skills that can help a student to deliver enhanced academic performance include:

• Enthusiasm & Initiative: An enthusiastic approach in students can help them discover their areas of interest and many new academic domains. Moreover, the initiative can help undertake academic ventures which will be conducive to growth.

• Discipline: Discipline can become the cornerstone of a successful life as a student. A disciplined approach in a student’s life can lead to better time management and better academic performance as well.

• Team Orientation: Students must know how to work collaboratively and successfully in teams since most future situations, whether professional or otherwise, will require them to interact with groups. So, an early start and insightful experiences with teams and groups can lay the path for a successful future.

• Time Management: Time management is essential in the life of a student, who needs to manage multiple aspects such as academic life, personal life, leisure, exploratory projects, social life, etc. simultaneously. Effective time management will enable a student to compartmentalize these aspects as well as devote quality time to each.

• Critical & Analytical Thinking: Critical and analytical thinking is needed at various levels of education, especially as a student begins to get promoted to higher grades and consequently to higher education. Analytical and critical abilities help students to understand, analyze, scrutinize as well as develop insights about various concepts.

• Problem-Solving Ability: The ability to devise solutions and solve problems effectively is a key skill that can help a student a long way, well into their future professional lives as well. Problem-solving ability enables students to deal with the various problems that may arise resiliently as well as resolve possible conflicts without suffering from excessive stress.

• Creative Thinking: Creative thinking is highly valued in both conventional and contemporary educational networks. A student’s ability to come up with innovative approaches and creative solutions in academic settings helps develop insights and overall growth.
• Stress Management: Needless to say, a student’s life is filled with stress-inducing aspects. Whether it be academic pressure, cut-throat competition, or pending deadlines for assignments projects, or examinations, the situations that arise can be highly stressful. Students who can manage stress can thrive amidst it and deliver results of value. Students should indeed be given stress management training by educational institutions to help them alleviate stress and avoid its various negative effects.

Teachers and professionals in educational settings also need to possess certain soft skills that will help them perform their jobs better and deliver satisfactory teaching-learning outcomes. Here are a few essential soft skills for teachers and professionals in an educational setting.

• Communication Ability: The job role of a teacher includes frequent communication with others, be it students, colleagues, higher management and authorities, or parents of students. So, good communication skills are needed to thrive in this job sector. Moreover, to be able to teach and manage a class effectively as well, a teacher needs to be a good communicator.

• Discipline: Maintaining a disciplined approach is important in an educational setting, both for the students and the teachers. Teachers, although shouldn’t adopt a strictly disciplinarian approach, should still have a basic discipline in the classroom and educational setting to prevent chaos.

• Empathy: A teacher must be able to connect to students genuinely to be able to perform their job role effectively. After all, a teacher has the responsibility of not only teaching a class but also ensuring student well-being, for which an empathetic approach and understanding of student perspectives is needed.

• Emotional Intelligence: Similarly, a teacher also needs to possess emotional intelligence and understanding to be able to provide support to the students as well as ensure their well-being. Students can approach a teacher with many problems that are not strictly academic, and to be able to address such issues, teachers must take an emotionally intelligent and empathetic stance.

• Public Speaking: The job role of a teacher in any conventional educational setting includes addressing a crowd of students in a classroom. As a result, competence in public speaking is needed to be able to teach in a classroom.

• Professionalism and Work Ethic: Like any other profession, the teaching profession also needs professionalism and work ethics, and more so since the role of a teacher also includes many added aspects of responsibilities and duties towards the welfare of others. So teachers need to have a strong sense of professionalism and respect for their professional ethics to thrive in this domain.

• Leadership Ability: A teacher, although has a collaborative role with students, has a major leadership role as well. A teacher should not only be able to effectively teach students but also mentor them, guide them, inspire them, and lead them. All such aspects need good leadership qualities in a teacher.

• Cultural Competence: With modern classrooms and educational settings becoming increasingly diverse, the same classroom has students from diverse cultures, religious backgrounds, family backgrounds, etc. A teacher thus needs to have cultural competence and an inclusive approach to teaching in the classroom which will enable all students to feel included and ensure that no one’s sentiments or feelings are hurt or dismissed in the socio-cultural context.

• Organizational Skills: To ensure decorum and organization in the educational setting, a teacher needs to possess organizational skills, whether it be in terms of discipline, time management, team management, or academic planning and strategizing. So, organizational skills are much needed in the profession of teaching to ensure systematic progress and decorum.

• Time Management: Teachers must manage time in various aspects of their profession, whether it be managing class timings, time devoted to student inquiries, time devoted to functions and programs, or time devoted to examinations and parent meetings. Hence, they need to have effective time management skills to be able to organize various activities in an educational setting.

• Problem-Solving: A teacher must not only guide students towards solving their problems, but they must address many aspects professionally as well that need them to possess effective problem-solving ability. Examples include addressing organizational concerns, addressing parental grievances, managing the academic concerns of students, managing relations with colleagues, etc. To manage all such aspects, teachers need to have efficient problem-solving skills.

• Conflict Resolution: Conflicts can arise sometimes in an educational setting, such as between students, from the parents of students, between parents and higher school authorities, and so on. A teacher should have the ability to mitigate such conflicts or resolve them when they arise to minimize stress and maintain the decorum of the educational setup.

Thus, soft skills are a very essential part of educational settings, both from the perspective of teachers and students.

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How to Assess Soft Skills in Employees and During Hiring

From the perspective of an employer, it is important to identify soft skills in potential candidates who you may be considering for hiring. But how to go about identifying or looking for soft skills in a candidate through their résumé? After all, it is tough to evaluate if a job applicant has the necessary soft skills in addition to the technical knowledge about the field.

However, through some simple approaches, it is possible to identify certain soft skills in candidates. Here are a few simple approaches to identifying soft skills among employees or job candidates. 

• Identify the Soft Skills Needed for the Job: The very first approach is to effectively identify and enlist the desirable soft skills for a particular job position. Depending upon whether it is a sales job, a managerial job, a STEM job, or a teaching job, the employers can prepare a list of the needed individual, professional, and interpersonal skills for performing it effectively. 
• Make the Interview Standardised: While interviewers can certainly incorporate certain individually oriented questions for each candidate in the job interview, the key aspect to objectively assess the soft skills of every candidate is to ask the same questions to all candidates. This will help the interviewers assess the degree to which different candidates are adept in the same skills and accordingly screen and select the best fit for the organization and the job position. 
• Ask Questions About Past Job Experience: To assess various soft skills that will be needed for the particular job position, you can ask the candidate about any experiences in their previous jobs where they may have used the relevant skill to deal with a particular professional situation. 

It is a good idea to prepare questions in advance that will help to ask a standardized set of questions across candidates and will enable you to assess the necessary soft skills for similar problems. You can ask questions such as: 

Some of the Most Important Questions
How did the candidate deal with a difficult client?	How did the candidate decide in a tough professional situation?
How did the candidate catch up with due deadlines and tasks in the past job?	How did the candidate address a work ethic-related dilemma?
Does the client believe in working overtime for a colleague?	How does the candidate like to organize their work?
How did the candidate perform a group task or work with a group to accomplish a goal?	How did the candidate deal with project responsibilities?
How does the candidate handle criticism as well as provide criticism of others’ ideas?	How did the candidate deal with or handle the changing demands of a project?

You can ask general questions as listed above or you can also ask individual experiences at previous jobs such as about particular situations in which they exhibited the skill in question. Such questions help to evaluate how well the candidate can practice soft skills in the actual work environment.

• Assess the Presence of Soft Skills through Assessment Tasks: When designated with assignment tasks for job interviews, employers can assess the soft skills of the candidates. Individual skills such as organizational skills, decision-making, problem-solving abilities, time management, research ability, team interaction, and communication abilities, etc. can be assessed through how the candidate performs/completes/works on the assignment.
• Try to Minimise Personal Biases: It is important to minimize any biases that can result from the interviewer's perceptions, opinions, and personal preferences. All the candidates must be assessed on both their hard and soft skills as objectively as possible.

This can be done by ensuring that there is a definite rubric for the various skills to be assessed and that similar questions are asked to all candidates. The scoring of candidates should also be done objectively and interviewers can be trained to minimize the impact of their personal biases on the judgment of candidates.

There are a large number of resources available in open source journals, the virtual domain as well as corporate domains to design questionnaires for job interviews, soft skill assessment as well as candidate evaluation.

How to Develop Soft Skills? Soft Skills Training

As has already been exhibited above, soft skills are as essential a part (if not more) of business growth and company longevity as hard skills and technical expertise of the employees. With changing times and the volatile nature of the work environment in the 21st century, there is a constant need for employees and the organization to upskill and hone interpersonal and individual abilities.

So, training and assessment of soft skills in the workforce becomes an important aspect of the overall growth of the company. Hence, companies take on a variety of measures and steps to grow and train the workforce in soft skills beneficial for the job roles. The Human Resource Department of a company can play a central role in the soft skill development of employees and teams as a whole.

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Here we have mentioned a few of the salient aspects of soft skills training as well as simple measures that can be taken up by companies to develop soft skills:

• During hiring, ensure that you assess the requisite soft skills for the job role in the candidates and select the ones who fit most appropriately with the company goals.
• In the present workforce, identify and enlist the desirable soft skills that will be helpful in better functioning of the company.
• Assess the current levels of soft skills across various domains possessed by the workforce. This will help in knowing the soft skills gap in the employees in terms of desirable level and possessed level of skills and abilities.
• Identify the domains in which different employees need to focus (vis a vis interpersonal, individual, professional, or multiple) to hone their skills.
• Divide your workforce accordingly based on such deficit areas or areas of soft skills that need further upskilling and reskilling.
• The organization can take on a variety of measures to train the employees and the teams in various soft skills areas:

Important Soft Skills
Seminars and Sessions with Trained Industry Experts	Give Employees Access to Various Digital Courses for Soft Skill Training
Training Sessions in the Soft Skill Area	Arrange Counseling Sessions with Career and Vocational Counselors for Employees
Peer Training and Coaching Sessions	Arrange Group Bonding and Team Building Exercises and Activities

• Further, to ensure that such practices are effective in producing the desired effect and help in the soft skill development of employees, provide active feedback to employees.
• Feedback helps employees to evaluate their progress and accordingly improve practices and professional habits.
• A good measure is to attach some incentive (which can be monetary or non-monetary in terms of praise, identification, acknowledgment, or certificates) to the soft skill training and outcomes. Incentives motivate employees to invest efforts toward the improvement of their soft skills.
• At the individual level of an employee, one should observe their behavior as well as the behavior of others, to learn and incorporate various aspects of soft skills.
• Moreover, employees should have an open mindset towards feedback and constructive criticism and accordingly modify their approach towards their workplace practices and soft skills.
• In many situations in the professional setting, employees may need to step out of their comfort zones and work in teams or with other colleagues in groups to achieve shared goals. Such settings can be a good stimulus to work on various interpersonal skills.
• While developing interventions or employee training programs for soft skill development, it is important to set realistic goals for the individual employees as well as the team in its entirety.

Therefore, through collective as well as individual efforts of employees and the company as a unit, it is possible to develop and hone the various soft skills needed to function in the workplace and ensure company growth.

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Conclusion

Soft skills have become an essential aspect of organizational growth in contemporary times. With a large workforce that is well-versed in technical expertise and knowledge, soft skills can become a deciding factor towards success. Hence there are several individual, professional, and interpersonal soft skills that employees and aspiring candidates need to be adept in such as communication ability, team orientation, collaborative skills, critical and analytical ability, etc. Through effective training, observation, guidance, and feedback, it is possible to develop one’s soft skills as well as those of a team.