Hard Skills vs Soft Skills: What's the Difference
Why is it so important to have a balance of both to succeed in the workforce
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Creating Balance
You probably have heard the terms, “hard skills” and “soft skills,” but what does that mean? Many of us have never sat down and truly listed our own skills to understand what we bring to the table and identify areas for growth.
That is why this article is going to help!
Defining and understanding your skills will not only benefit you during the interview process but will help you during your career to guide you towards professional learning and growth opportunities that will continue to challenge you.
Your goal? To become like an athlete. Athletes constantly work on the skills that make them great, but what makes them even greater is they spend equal if not more time working on the skills they are not as strong in to maximize their abilities.
Now let’s get down to business and define these two complimentary skill categories.
Hard Skills – Defined
This skill group can be easily defined as something that is measurable with data and evidence. These are usually skills you were explicitly taught during your time working, training, and/or schooling. Think of them as technical skills that produce a measurable outcome.
Some examples are as follows:
Accounting
SEO marketing
Creative Suite proficiency (Adobe, Canva, Microsoft)
Specific Account Management experience (Varies depending on field of work)
Coding language’s ability
Data Analyst
A certification in specific task
Degree from university
UX design
See what I mean? Hard skills are basically the skills needed to do the tasks within your job. What is great about hard skills is they are very transferable and can speed up the process of learning other skills as well.
A big callout I want to make here, especially for people searching for a job, is that you do not necessarily need the specific hard skill for that job you want.
If you are early on or even a bit more experienced in your career, there is a good chance the company will provide training to help get you up to speed on these skills needed to perform the job at hand.
Want to set yourself apart, however? Go out and learn the skills of the jobs you are wanting to apply for before applying. Candidates with previous experience, or at the very least understand the job functions, will have the upper hand.
Soft Skills – Defined
The best way to think about soft skills is to think about your personality traits / how you work effectively. Unlike a measurable skill such as proficiency with Excel, soft skills are centered more around the kind of worker and employee you are. Hard skills are technical, and soft skills are who you are.
Some examples are as follows:
Teamwork
Effective communicator
Adaptability
Desire to learn
Listener
Starting to understand the difference between soft and hard skills now?
Now that you have a stronger understanding, grab a pen and some paper, and make a list of your hard skills and a list of your soft skills. Yes, do that right now and then come back to this article.
Okay, now you have that list of your own skills, it’s time to go over how to incorporate them in your resume and during an interview.
Skills Section on A Resume
It is very important to state your skills on your resume but keep it clear and concise.
Two of the best options are:
Lay them out in the summary section of your resume
Create a small specific section with skills in a bullet list
When you do this, make sure you only reference your top 3 soft and hard skills that are most applicable for that job. I know it can be easy to get carried away in that section, so make sure to keep it short.
You can swap them out depending on the job you are applying for if you think one skill would favor a specific role over the other!
Reviewing Skills During Interview
There is always a question in every interview that goes something like, “What skills do you think you have that would be most applicable to this position?”
That is when you pull out your list!
Again, keep it simple. Use only the skills that are most applicable to this role as you do not want to spend the next 30 minutes listing out every skill you have. That would not come off well at all. Focus on the big hitters, the ones you know the recruiter cares about.
Before you get all excited to make a list of why you are awesome and share it with everyone and their boss, make sure that everything included in the “skills” section of your resume, can be immediately spoken about, and backed up with evidence and/or data.
There would be nothing worse than being caught in an interview claiming your skillset includes something you have literally never done before. Make sure the skills and traits are honest, true, and can be proven.
Hard skills need to have a specific project you worked on where you used hat hard skill to be successful (*cough* make the company money *cough*) and soft skills need to have real examples where you have exercised that skill for the good of your coworkers.
Interlude
I know a lot of you are feeling confident right now. You have your list and now you are going to update your skills section in your resume and start thinking about how you are going to speak on these skills when given the chance in the interview. We love to see it.
But before you do that, it is important to identify which skills are the most sought after in today’s workforce. It is very competitive out there, so you need to set yourself apart.
Good thing for you, I have complied a list of the most important skills heading into 2023. Check it out below:
Top Soft Skills for 2023:
Cognitive Flexibility
Emotional Intelligence
Complex Problem Solving
Resilience
Digital Literacy
Initiative
Proactive
Growth Mindset
Storytelling
Time Management
Top Hard Skills for 2023:
Engineering
Data Scientists / Analysts
Project Management
Supply Chain Management
Graphic Design
Technical Literacy
Social Media Marketing
Programming Skills
Sales & Account Management
Analytical Reasoning
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