Hard skills vs soft skills…what are your skills?

When reading through a job description, you may come across qualities that are listed under “soft skills” and “hard skills”.
And, when composing your resume, you may also need to classify your skills as soft and hard.

Fortunately, the difference between hard skills vs soft skills is quite clear and very easy to define.

Hard skills are skills that are easy to measure.
They are typically specific to a particular job and can be acquired through training: like the ability to code or translate texts from one language to another. The use of IT and activities related to logic thinking.

Soft skills, on the other hand, are a bit harder to pin down and measure.
These may include your personal qualities that may be helpful in a specific profession (like sociability) or more specific attributes (like negotiation skills) that may you have spent some time developing.

When listing these skills on a resume, hard skills typically take their place in the areas where you hold specific certifications. Soft skills, on the other hand, can be described under personal qualities or illustrated in how you handled specific work situations.

What are hard skills?

As we’ve mentioned above, hard skills are skills that are quantifiable and measurable. These are skills that you can train and your abilities can be certified.

Here are just a few hard skills examples
Accounting
Knowledge of a foreign language
Business analysis
Computer programming and coding
Marketing and sales
Cloud computing
Ability to perform medical procedures
Knowledge of the legal system
Copywriting
SEO and so on.

This list can be very long as almost every profession comes with a list of its own hard skills.

What are soft skills?

Soft skills, as we’ve mentioned above, are much harder to measure compared to hard skills. And while soft skills can definitely be developed and even trained, there are very few options for proving your level in a specific soft skill with a test or certificate.
On the other hand, a study by Wonderlic mentions that 93% of employers find soft skills essential or very important when hiring new employees.

Here are soft skills examples that may better illustrate this concept
Social skills
Creativity
Negotiation skills
Collaboration skills
Adaptability
Emotional intelligence
Teamwork ability
Leadership skills
Listening
Attention to detail
Punctuality
Flexibility
Patience
Ability to multitask
Decision making
Conflict resolution
Cultural awareness and sensitivity
Likeability
Problem solving
Organization and more
Some of the skills above are often referred to by HR managers as “people skills”.

While soft skills are not easy to evaluate, they are often listed in job descriptions and important requirements for various positions.

NOTE!
Soft skills are often referred to as ‘life skills’ …why do you think that is?