Soft skills are abilities for positive behavior and dealing with everyday life demands and challenges. Research shows soft skills contribute 85% to career success while hard skills only 15%. Soft skills include interpersonal skills, social skills, emotional intelligence, and time management. They complement hard skills. Soft skills can be divided into domain-general skills like teamwork and leadership, and domain-specific skills focused on a job. Soft skills also include transferable skills that apply to many jobs, personal traits, and knowledge-based skills. Developing soft skills helps individuals become self-aware and make plans based on opportunities and aspirations.

1. SOFT
SKILLS
Archana Dubey
(Department of Management)

2. ‘SOFT SKILL’ - WHAT IS IT?
Wikipedia says- A skill is the ability to perform an action with
determined results, often within a given amount of time,
energy, or both.
In other words, Skill is the ability to use time, energy, or both to
accomplish a task within a given time frame.
Soft skills have been defined by the World Health Organization
(WHO) as “abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that
enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and
challenges of everyday life”
In the light of these definitions, we can say that the power
acquired to perform a task properly using time, energy, and
knowledge is called skill sets or skills.

3. According to researches conducted in Harvard and Stanford Universities only
15% of your career success is provided by your hard skills, whilst other 85% by
so called soft skills. “Soft skills get little respect but will make or break your
career”
“Soft Skills” correlates with some terms of a very close
meaning: “Life Skills”, “Emotional Intelligence Quotients”,
“Social Skills”, and “Interpersonal Skills”.
Soft skills complement hard skills to enhance an individual's
relationships, job performance and career prospects. Unlike
hard skills, which tend to be specific to a certain type of task
or activity, soft skills are broadly applicable.

4. WHY SOFT SKILLS -
SOAR?
Self- An awareness of the characteristics that define the
person one is and wants to become.
Opportunity- An awareness of the possibilities that exist,
the demands they make and the rewards and satisfactions
they offer.
Aspirations- The ability to make realistic choices and plans
based on sound information and on self–opportunity
alignment.
Results- The ability to review outcomes, plan and take
action to implement decisions and aspirations, especially at
points of transition.

5. In order to SOAR students need two things:
 Academic Roots
– Discipline based knowledge and understanding
 Academic Wings
– The ability to enhance that knowledge and
understanding with awareness (self and others), critical
thinking, reflective practice.

6. Skills can be initially divided into two parts.
1. Domain-General Skills
2. Domain-Special Skills
Domain-General skills - These are the skills which are
related with Time Management, Team Work, Working
Groups, Leadership and Self-Motivation
Domain-Specific Skills: These are skills which are
focused on a specific job and task functionality, ie.
installation of heavy duty generation, construction of
nuclear plant etc.

7. Some theorists have divided the skills into three parts.
1. Transferable skills / Functional skills
2. Personal Traits / Attitudes
3. Knowledge-based skills
What are transferable skills?
Transferable skills are talents and abilities that can be used in
a variety of jobs and careers. These can be achieved through
a job, school, internship, hobby, and volunteer experience.
Such as time management and language skills.
Ability and qualifications are the basements of transferable
skills. Verbs can express it. Examples – Organize, analyze,
write, etc.

8. 8
What are the personal traits or attitudes Skills?
The basis of such skills is the personal qualities or attitudes
required to perform the task. Such skills are developed from
childhood through experience at different levels of life.
Adjectives can express such skills: examples – patient,
skilled, self-reliant, etc.
What are knowledge-based skills?
It is the knowledge of specific topics, methods, and
information required to perform certain tasks. Knowledge-
based skills are acquired through education, training, and
work experience.
A noun can express these skills—for example- personnel
administration, contract management, accounting, etc.

9. CLASSIFICATION OF SKILLS
According to Jenny et. al. (2018), Rifkin (2008) & Robles (2016),
they outlined six classification of skills and categorized them
as listed below.
I. Hard Skills: These are the skills which involves methods,
procedures, processes or/and techniques, and usually
these are the professional, technical and academic
qualifications.
II. Labor Skills: These are the skills which are used for the
economical productivity, such as electricians, masons,
engineers, carpenters, bakers and other occupations that
are economically productive.

10. III. Life Skills: These skills involves ideas, things and people in
carrying out complex tasks through deliberate,
systematic and measurable efforts.
IV. People Skills: These skills concerned with the self-
understanding, relationship with others, trust building,
self-representation and communication.
V. Social Skills: These skills basically facilitate interaction
and build relationships as well as enhance communication
to the society, this also known as Socialization
VI. Soft Skills: These skills combine interpersonal, social and
communication skills as well as character traits, attitude,
career attributes and emotional intelligence quotient
among others.

13. THANK YOU