The Importance of Soft Skills in the Workplace

By Vicki Bohlsen, President

I was recently asked to speak to a computer programming class at IUPUI about the importance of “soft skills” in the workplace. Admittedly, I was a little rusty on the topic, but I quickly took a trip down memory lane.

While “hard skills” demonstrate experience and understanding of the job you are hired to do, soft skills will give insight into your ability to work with others and grow within a company. Soft skills help you communicate, identify threats and opportunities, and solve problems so that hard skills can be used to their full extent.

The IUPUI students asked me a lot of great questions, but one that really popped out was about how to identify the areas in which they need to improve. 

I shared an example of when I had identified a few soft skills I needed help with. It all started with an art history class that I was really struggling with in college. Every paper I got back talked about how I never “own” an opinion. My papers were riddled with “and,” “on the other hand,” and “but,” when we were asked to describe or answer a question.

At the time I didn’t really get it, but then the same thing happened in an English literature course I was taking.

I went to talk to my advisor – hoping to get some much-needed advice – and he told me, “Vicki, you are an empathetic person. And you respect others’ opinions and viewpoints. But in both the art history and literature course you are being asked to state your opinion.”

Once I started locating and writing about my own personal beliefs I started to improve. But…. when I had to get up in class and talk about it, I shrunk again.

I decided to take an advanced speech class in hopes to glean some practice in both areas. At first, I was uneasy writing speeches on topics like “the future of television” and “state the most important thing you learned in high school,” but it gave me the opportunity to claim my own belief or experience. I learned that when you are confident, it is much easier to talk in front of others. 

I suggested the students rate on a scale of 1-10 how they think they score in each of the soft skills. If they scored themselves below a 6 in one, I urged them to set a goal and devise a plan on how they could improve. Can you take a specific class, join a club, volunteer to lead a team project or get a part-time job that will help you?  

I highly recommended they find a way to list soft skills on their resume and demonstrate or discuss them in an interview. Doing so will show an understanding of their importance and desire to build upon them in the workplace. I have seen applicants list character traits on their resume with bullet points in between, thus only taking one line out of that precious one-page space available.

I told them honing soft skills will help support their career and will, undoubtedly, create new opportunities. Networking is essential. At this point, have they considered finding a mentor?

It is never too late to evaluate your own soft skills and make a concerted effort to improve.