Soft skills are a combination of multiple non-technical abilities such as teamwork, communication, time management, leadership and many more. These skills can be used for interacting with others effectively.
As per The World Economic Forum, people management, critical thinking, complex problem-solving and emotional intelligence would be the most sought-after soft skills for hiring by 2025. Such observation by the world’s leading body is evident for why are soft skills important.
Soft skills are required everywhere, from interviews to the workplace. An employee needs soft skills in negotiating a new contract, friendly chat with a coworker, discussing a new idea, networking at trade meets etc.
People use soft skills in client meetings, closing deals, and the presentation before the official board meeting.
Though there are dozens of importance of soft skills, let’s go through six of them here in the passage.
Importance of Soft Skills
Importance for promotion
According to a recent survey, ninety-four per cent of hiring managers prefer more vital soft skills over experience and hard skills.
It is vital to understand and develop soft skills to excel in the career graph. Stronger soft skill will keep ahead of the competition at the office or among job applicants.
Working with a collaborative approach, innovative ideas, active listening and effective communication with co-workers are all highly valued in the current workplaces. All of these are soft skills that ensure productive, effective and friendly office culture.
An organization becomes well-positioned in this ultra-competitive world through soft skills.
Soft skills drive customer experience
Customers of today have dozens of options to choose from for their requirement. Customer support is the prominent distinctive feature of any company which impact customer experience and sales directly.
Despite all robotics and automated chat boxes, nothing can beat human to human chat experience in terms of clarity, comfort and convenience.
Soft skills are a necessity for future workplaces
Deloitte Access Economics has written in their report that soft skills-intensive jobs would cover around two-thirds of all occupations by 2030. In the near future, with Demand for artificial intelligence and machine learning increasing and the price of robotics decreasing, most of the work will be automated.
In such a scenario, soft skills such as communication, critical thinking and teamwork will be highly demanding.
Difficult to automate
In continuation from the last point, soft skills are tough to automate and not expected to happen in the near future. In Demand for human experience in customer support, soft skills will be more desirable in future.
High Demand among hiring managers
Given its importance, soft skills are in high Demand among recruiters. Recruiters want someone who possesses problem-solving, team player, active, friendly, reachable, etc.
With all the above pointers indicating why are soft skills important, a person should develop soft skills through improving their social connections, network at the office, working on leadership traits, volunteering, working on projects. These activities will improve soft skills and ensure a long and steady career ahead.