HARD SKILLS & SOFT SKILLS-an introduction

HARD SKILLS & SOFT SKILLS-an introduction

In today’s competitive environment in order to become successful
a student needs to learn a right balance of two set of skills. These
two skills are – Hard skills and Soft skills.

Hard Skills: 

"Hard" skills are also called Technical skills .These skills help us to perform well in the job. Schools do a good job of teaching, reading, writing subjects like science, math and other

"hard" skills.
In the world of work, “hard skills” are that basic technical or
administrative procedures which are prerequisite to perform a job. We can learn these from books or from hands-on experience.For example hard skill for a teacher is comprehensive
knowledge of his/her subject. These skills are typically easy to observe, quantify and
measure. They are also easy to learn, because most of the time the skill sets are brand new
to the learner and no unlearning is involved.

Soft Skills:

Soft skills are also called People Skills. These are desirable qualities for certain forms of
employment that do not depend on acquired knowledge, rather they include common
sense, the ability to deal with people, and a positive flexible attitude .
According to Wikipedia “Soft skills refer to the cluster of personality traits, social graces, and
facility with language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimism that mark people to varying degrees. Soft skills complement hard skills, which are the technical requirements of a j ob.”
Soft skills differ from context to context and vary from individual to individual perception. Also the problem with soft skills is that there is a basic assumption that they are inborn skills. But a closer examination of these skills would suggest otherwise. While some individuals exhibit these skills naturally, some learn these skills on their own through experience but for a majority of individuals these can also be acquired and nurtured over time. That's why it's so important to focus as much on soft skills training and development as you do on traditional hard skills. Soft skills help you to gain an edge in your personal life, social life as well as in your job. Many researches have proved that individuals with good soft skills are preferred more for a job than the one who lacks in soft skills.