Soft Skills: What Are They and How Can They Help You Stand Out

Even in a job market that favors job seekers, it’s important to stand out from the crowd. Having all of the requisite experience in a job listing is a great start and should help get you an interview, but, assuming everyone else that gets an interview also meets those qualifications, what is that “little something extra” you can offer? 

This is where hard skills and soft skills come into play.

It’s What You Do AND How You Do It

To understand how to position your hard and soft skills, you need to understand what they are.

Hard Skills are easily quantifiable and can be measured and defined relatively simply. 

On a job posting, you may see them listed under “Required Qualifications.” For example:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree and/or years of relevant experience 
• Certifications in Salesforce, Google AdWords, HubSpot, etc.
• Demonstrable proficiency in HTML, O365 suite, CRM software, etc.

Soft Skills, on the other hand, aren’t nearly as cut and dry and often can fall into the “I know it when I see it” category. They define what kind of employee you are and how you fit into the work culture. In most cases, soft skills correlate to personality traits and are developed over time across many experiences.

Job descriptions will have soft skill “buzz words” peppered throughout. Some common soft skills that show up include:

• Self-starter
• Creative thinker
• Ability to work independently
• Team player
• Multi-tasker

Very simply put: Hard Skills are what you can do. Soft Skills are how you do it.

Make Those Skills Work for You

Resume

Many factors go into creating a resume that gets noticed. Emphasizing your hard skills is a no-brainer, and they rarely need to be changed up depending on the job for which you are applying provided the jobs are in the same field. 

Different employers may often look for different soft skills depending on their corporate structure and company culture. Carefully reading the job description can provide you with a guide for emphasizing in your resume the ones a potential employer is looking for. One may be looking for a self-starter while another really needs a collaborative thinker. Some may need someone who can juggle multiple deadlines while others need someone who can focus on a single project. 

Knowing the soft skills an employer is looking for can help you position your skills on your resume in a way that will get noticed by AI screeners and recruiters alike.

Interview

The interview is a potential employer’s chance to get to know you as a person and employee. While it’s good to highlight key points of your hard skills, you don’t need to rehash all of them. They’ve seen your resume and know your background; that’s why they asked to interview you.

In preparing for the interview go back over the job posting and look for the soft skills mentioned. Make note of examples in your work history that demonstrate your strengths in these areas so you have these ready during the interview. 

Also, don’t be afraid to talk about activities you do outside of work if they provide strong examples of the soft skills they are seeking. This can be especially helpful for those just entering the workforce or those with gaps in their work history. Organizing a softball league can show your ability to communicate with people on different levels. That improv class you took helped you become more adaptable and think creatively. Serving on the board of a local non-profit demonstrates both your leadership and teamwork abilities.

Ultimately, employers are looking for the right combination of hard and soft skills. Linking soft skills to your hard skills in your responses is a great way to show interviewers what you bring to the table without just reading down a list.