
Mar 26, 2021 - 08:05 PM
- Helping you work effectively with other people.
- Making you a more desirable collaborator.
- Improving your relationships with colleagues across an organization.
- Giving you a leg up over people who have similar sets of hard skills.
- Developing your ability to explain why your hard skills are so important.
Hard skills, or technical skills, are critical for getting your foot in the door. Without them, you won't even get the call back for an interview. Once you've met the basic requirements, however, your soft skills take your candidacy to the next level. Employers want to hire someone who can work well with other people, effectively collaborate with other departments and eventually take on more of a leadership role.
"You can think of soft skills as the catalyst that unlocks the value that is contained in the hard skills that a candidate brings to their job," Chicago-based executive consultant, career coach and best-selling author Terry B. McDougall told LiveCareer. "Without the catalyst the hard skills remain untapped."