How valuable are Soft Skills?

There is an age-old mantra of sales people that goes “People do business with people they like”. Sales people don’t need to play sports with their customers or go for drinks with them every Friday, but they have to make the interactions with others a smooth as possible and respond when the customer asks or needs something. Sometimes they may not be able to solve all the problems and may come back with bad news, but still, they need to be open and reassuring with their customer and try to keep the relationship cordial and productive.


So how do they do it? Besides technical and product knowledge, they make use of so-called soft skills. And when you put together your CV and you go for your interviews, you need to remember that you are essentially selling your professional self to a customer - a potential employer. Your hard-earned qualifications and certificates caught their eye and now you need to persuade them to choose you above other candidates who may have presented the same on-paper credentials.


This is where you need to remember your soft skills - those intangible things that make you, you and give your potential employer the sense that they would like to add you to their team and work with you: people want to do business with people they like.