Think back to the first job interview you prepared for. There are a couple small aspects you probably focused on practicing: giving a firm handshake, maintaining eye contact, and speaking both slowly and clearly. The hidden reason for these seemingly odd or unrelated tweaks made in anticipation of speaking with a potential employer? Everything from a firm handshake to maintained eye contact convey something important to hiring managers that a resume can never truly capture: soft skills. 

While hard skills can be easily identified, the opposite is true for soft skills. Soft skills are more intangible and personal. Essentially, they are personal habits within the workplace or interpersonal skills that describe how you work with others. Soft skills form the foundation of collaboration and success in the workplace. Often, these skills are unintentionally honed as one simply fulfills tasks throughout the day both while in school or while in the workplace. Showcasing competency with a soft skill is often characterized again by this unintentionally. For example, maintaining eye contact suggests active listening. A firm handshake suggests confidence. Speaking clearly indicates effective communication skills.

Often, people consider a relevant college degree to be the main requirement that must be filled when applying for a job. This hard skill alone is not enough now. In fact, the US Census Bureau released findings in 2020 that found the percentage of people age 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or higher jumped from 29.9% to 36.0% from 2010 to 2019. This means the pool of technically qualified job candidates expanded as well. Soft skills make applicants stand apart.

This emphasis on how mandatory adeptness with everything interpersonal is might seem exaggerated given the increasing digitalization of the workplace. However, even the increasingly common use of Zoom to allow remote work after the pandemic has not minimized the importance of having soft skills. If anything, skills like emotional intelligence, communication, and adaptability are more important now than ever before. 

This is especially true for those part of the gig economy or entrepreneurs. Managing change and being able to handle disappointment are more important for long term success and growth than being proficient in Microsoft Word or Excel. The fact is that there is much more turnover in the workplace today. It is increasingly rare for the first job a person has (or even the second really) to be their last. The average number of jobs in a lifetime is now 12.4 according to a 2021 survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This statistic is a dramatic increase from what it was 50 years ago.

Moreover, the jobs today are incredibly different from those in the past. Manual labor and most blue collar jobs have been eliminated by new technology. The jobs that remain in companies are ones that computers can not easily simulate because they require workers capable of critical thought and human connection. These are both soft skills.

For this reason, executives and hiring managers agree that soft skills are equally as important as hard skills when it comes to job performance. A 2016 study conducted by The Wall Street Journal found that ninety two percent of the executives surveyed agreed with this statement. This is because it is often harder to train employees in soft skills than technical ones. Companies can pay to train new hires in a specific software, but no amount of money can buy a positive attitude or common sense.