Soft Skills

Soft skills are a cluster of productive personality traits that characterize one's relationships in a social milieu with other people. These skills can include social graces, communication abilities, language skills, personal habits, cognitive or emotional empathy, time management, teamwork and leadership traits. deems soft skills as critical for being industrious in today’s workplace. Soft skills complement hard skills also known as technical skills, for productive workplace performance and everyday life competencies . Hard skills were the only skills necessary for career employment and were generally quantifiable and measurable from educational background, work experience or through interview. In the 20th century soft skills are a major differentiator and sine qua non for employability. A study conducted by Harvard University noted that 80% of achievements in career are determined by soft skills and only 20% by hard skills. Experts say soft skills training should begin for a person when they are students, to perform efficiently in their academic environment as well as in their future workplace.