For the human species evolution means survival.
In order for someone to survive in a business environment where competition is necessary, continuous evolution is needed. A person’s career development depends on a variety of factors.
The most important of these are the abilities a person must possess. These vary depending on the context and the type of work. Hard and soft skills are necessary when it comes to the job sector. But what are hard and soft skills?
“Hard skills” are related to all the technical and encyclopedic knowledge of a person in order to use them to perform a specific profession.
In contrast, “soft skills” are skills that are related to a person’s combinational communication skills, personal beliefs, emotional intelligence and basic personality traits, which are not unchanged. They change throughout experience and learning process because their nature is about human interaction and interpersonal relationships. They are often called, inter alia, ‘human skills’, ‘social skills’ or ‘interpersonal skills’. “Soft skills” are widely applied in any professional and non-professional environment.
Some of the most basic and important “soft skills” are communication, teamwork and collaboration, adaptability, problem solving, critical thinking, flexibility, as well as time management and organization.
Nowadays, in the age of competition, it is extremely important that soft skills can make someone stand out from a crowd of well-trained people and also they can be used as a key factor in finding or keeping the job. According to the results of research by the Stanford Research Institute and the Carnegie Mellon Foundation (2008), the 500 most successful directors of Fortune Municipal Magazine prove that 75% of their long-term success depends on their “soft skills”, while only 25% on their technical abilities. Similar results were found in a study conducted at Harvard University, which found that 80% of one’s career achievements were due to “soft skills”, while only 20% were determined by “hard skills”.