The Importance of Soft Skills

by Toby Amos

In the world of work, and more broadly in life, skills can be divided into 2 categories. Hard skills are those which are job specific and for which you are likely to have some sort of qualification. For example, a hard skill for a maths teacher would be calculus etc. Soft skills on the other hand, are much harder to quantify. They are usually interpersonal and include things such as how well you communicate.

Soft skills are often just as important, if not more important, than hard skills to be able to perform a role effectively. Those who have watched the US legal drama ‘Suits’ know this to be true. Despite not having a degree from Harvard Law School, Mike Ross makes it into a prestigious law firm solely based on his exceptional memory.

One reason hiring managers and employers look for applicants with soft skills is because soft skills are transferable that can be used regardless of the job at which the person is working. This makes job candidates with them very adaptable employees. Another factor, which is often overlooked, is longevity. The hard skills of someone who has recently graduated or been on a training programme will slowly deteriorate - especially with a lack of retraining. However, as soft skills are generally built up over a long period of time, they are more durable. Irrespective of this, they can always be improved on.

In 2018, a record 27.9% of 18 year olds in England went to university and that figure is set to rise this coming academic year. An increasingly competitive labour market means firms are looking for prospective employees to have a broad soft skill set as well as the necessary qualifications - when faced with a number of suitably qualified applicants, this may be the distinguishing factor. In fact, some firms believe in the importance of soft skills to such an extent that they have taken the provision of training for young people upon themselves. You may have seen advertisements for Barclays’ Life Skills programme amongst others.

This article was prompted by the recent prefect training day for year 12 pupils on the 13th of June, which is testament to how useful I found it to be. The day aimed to develop the aforementioned types of skills - specifically leadership, communication and how to effectively present to an audience. The activities were lead by soft skills specialists, Andrew Wright and Christopher Jones-Warner who both had a wealth of knowledge and experience to share with us. The exercises ranged from a focus on body language to developing and presenting a school manifesto. Personally, my biggest takeaway from the day was advice on presentation techniques. However, more generally, my thoughts were that everyone could benefit from a similar experience.

I believe that, whilst academic qualifications are the main purpose of our time spent at school and therefore remain the most important element, soft skills development has a part to play in preparing us for the workplace. However, of course, alone they are not sufficient preparation and in order to be most effective, the correct balance must be struck. Some argue that there is no use teaching skills which will go unused if young people are underqualified anyway and, to an extent, I would agree. Given the already high level of academic achievement at PGS, once pupils have developed these skills, they will have scope to put them to good use- whether in be in the world of business or elsewhere. For this reason, I feel that more time spent by PGS pupils working on these areas can only improve their future prospects.