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.





Sometimes other people see things in you that you did not notice or value yourself. For example, you may not have noticed that you are the natural glue in a team, or you are the catalyst who pushes projects forward. Get an external perspective by asking your friends and colleagues where they see your soft skills and where or when they’ve noticed them.


So how can you get across your dependability, your enthusiasm, your ability to use your initiative, to solve problems, to efficiently manage your time, to communicate effectively?  Hiring managers often see these words on CVs, and when candidates come for interview, they are keen to probe further. This is your opportunity to shine. Questions beginning with phrases like “How would you....” or “What would you do if....” are your chance to share situations where you have used your soft skills to benefit a situation - it could be for a previous employer or in a club or team setting where you have made a real difference: how did you deal with that difficult client?  how did you accomplish your objectives whilst juggling the added workload of an absent colleague?


Often you won’t have much time to get your point across as it will likely be part of a longer discussion about your suitability for a role. So, try to prepare in advance: make a list of your soft skills and make a specific note of how and when you used them; then add some context and the outcome. Practice talking about them out loud, and remember to stop when you’ve got to the end - no babble!


For example, a friend of mine was recently asked how they managed to prepare marketing material for an up-and-coming trade show alongside training a new person in the job and covering for a colleague who was absent suddenly on sick leave who also had tight deadlines. My friend described how she tackled the situation systematically. First, she communicated: she informed the relevant parties that she would take care of her colleague’s activities and explained that she needed a short time to get up to speed. This bought her time and credibility. In parallel she accelerated the new recruit’s training so that he could prepare basic marketing materials under her guidance. By the end of the week, she was on top of her workload and had the confidence of the teams around her. By taking the initiative, she successfully completed both her own tasks and those put upon her and showed her team and her managers how professionally and confidently she accomplished her objectives.





Concrete qualifications and experience have traditionally caught the eyes of employers, but increasingly soft skills are opening doors. Make sure you take them into account on your CV and be prepared to tell employers just how special you are.