When you are completing your resume, it is essential that you mention all the important things that make you different from every other applicant. Soft skills are a mix of social skills, character, emotional traits and other things about you that may be difficult to put on paper as they are intangibles. Hiring managers want to see your personality when they ready through your resume or cover letter, which makes it critical that you know how to put yourself on paper every time you submit a resume.
Examples of Soft Skills
You first of all must have the hard skills that a job needs. These include proficiency of language, academic qualifications, knowledge of certain protocols and machine operation, typing speed, etc. Your soft skills include the following:
Communication skills
Emotional intelligence
Time management
Flexibility
Collaboration
Why do employers scan for soft skills on your resume?
You could have all the hard skills that a job needs but an employer does not want candidates that are unable to fit into their corporate structure. Most times, your soft skills give hiring managers an indication of how well you will do when onboarded into their workforce. Where soft skills are not put into consideration during hiring, you find that productivity, collaboration, morale and company culture all suffer seriously.
It is therefore not surprising that a recent survey showed that HR managers would hire a candidate with impressive soft skills even where the hard skills were not exceptional, rather than weak soft skills with impressive technical skills. The point is that soft skills are critical in a company’s hiring decision so you must make sure employers see what you bring to the table at a glance.
How do you showcase your soft skills on your resume?
Create a separate section for soft skills on your resume. Be creative with the title, but it has to be clear. An example is “Soft Skill highlights.” There should be at least three bullet points that you clarify simply and briefly. Where you can, include specific quantitative data in your soft skill example so that it is impressionable. An example is “speaks four languages including French and Spanish” or “trained 100 new employees through a self-designed orientation package.” Make sure that you tailor the skills to the industry that you are applying to so that it is relatable to the hiring manager. It is also worth researching what soft skills are important to the kind of job you are applying to so that you can use that to guide your choice of skills to highlight.
Conclusion
Get your resume through the machine hoops and on the table of your recruiters more often by using the right soft skills. You can also use a resume analyzing plug-in like Jobalytics to help you ensure that your resume has all the keywords that are unique to the job you are applying to.