Do you know there are jobs in India where for 1 available vacancy at least 1000 candidates apply? So for one job there are 1000 candidates to choose from.
Then how do you survive?
Today when competition is tough and you are asked to stand out from the rest then you need to acquire each and every skill in your life.
For a career you need to have a number of talents because just one is not enough. I mean just having great educational qualification would not be enough in the current competitive environment.
Therefore in this article we tried our best to give an insight why soft skills are important for your career.
We begin the article by letting you know some soft skills you need and then we tell you how they can affect your career.
We also debate which is more important soft skills or just academic qualification?
Finally we conclude you giving some tips on how to develop soft skills.
EQ (Emotional Quotient) or IQ (Intelligence Quotient)
Before I tell you some soft skills you need to know about EQ and IQ.
What is EQ?
EQ means Emotional Quotient. Soft Skills are all about EQ rather your IQ.
Emotional Quotient include things like your overall personality, social attitudes, personal habits and other skills like communication, language you use, leadership quality etc.
Basically soft skills are nothing but measurement of your Emotional Quotient. If your EQ is high then your soft skills are going to be more developed.
On the other hand IQ or intelligence quotient has to do with your technical skills like aptitude, reasoning, presence of mind etc.
Here it does not include your soft skills.
Usually a candidate has higher IQ but he is not very good at soft skills. But there are candidates who score less on IQ but they have well developed EQ.
Which one is important EQ or IQ? Well the answer is both.
However in this article we shall emphasize on EQ because EQ is often overlooked to IQ when he or she want to pursue their career.
What are Soft Skills?
Soft Skills are nothing complicated. You can say soft skills cover all your personality traits. In order to have soft skills you need to have a well developed personality.
Here are some traits that are integral part of Soft Skills.
Overall Personality – Your overall personality! Now a personality covers many things that we discussed in next sections. However personality is the most important aspect of your soft skills. How do you carry yourself? Every small details like how you dress, color of your tie, your shoes, hairstyle everything covers your personality.
Communication Skill – Your personality depends upon how you talk to others. Whether you are talking in a social gathering or group of few people your communication skills would define your overall personality. How do you interact with ladies is also very important.
Command over Language and Body Language – Language is important whether it is the body language or the language you speak. Your demeanor must give positive vibes. It means you must look cool and very confident when you meet someone in public. Moreover the words are important. What you speak is also very important.
Leadership Quality – Leadership is an integral part of your personality. If you have a great leadership quality then you have acquired one of the important soft skills. You must be able to lead and also inspire the team or people you are working with.
Social Grace – You must be charming and charismatic person. I mean to say you must be socially acceptable. People must love you to meet or hang out with you.
These were some of the soft skills that you need to have. Check more soft skills here & ways to improve the same.
How Soft Skills Can Affect your Career
Soft Skills are very important for career. I need to explain this in great details.
Today economy has been diversified. So it is not important to become only engineer or a doctor. You can be a chef or a MLM marketer too.
There are jobs which are highly technical and they need great IQ. However there are some other jobs where you need EQ that means your soft skills.
That means if your educational qualification is not good, like you are an engineering graduate with an aggregate less than 50% then still you can have a good career if you have developed your soft skills.
If you have soft skills like leadership, teamwork, communication skills then you can easily find a job.
Today there are many jobs that require more of EQ rather IQ.
So if you find difficult to have higher IQ then you should go after developing soft skills.
Soft skills can really affect your career.
Why You Need Them?
Soft Skills are needed not only for getting a job but also for becoming extraordinarily successful.
You all want to get a job so you need some soft skills like leadership quality or great communication skills.
However, if you are not satisfied with your life and you want more then you need to change your attitude. I mean to say overall personality.
Some people have money but still they don’t have soft skills so they become socially less acceptable.
For social acceptance you need to work on your soft skills. Like how you carry yourself, your dressing style, how do you talk to a woman I mean every small details.
If you want to move up the ladder then you got to work on your soft skills. It will make huge difference and you will be far ahead from rest of the crowd.
So you need soft skills for being a super successful man/woman than just getting a job.
Academic Qualification versus Soft Skills
Now you might be confused after reading this article which is more important soft skills or just academic qualification.
I must say this we all focus on academic qualification. Our parents right from kinder garden want us to score good marks they want their child to top in all exams.
However no one is interested focusing on soft skills like developing your personality.
If a child finds difficult to study certain subjects then parents need to focus on developing his or her personality.
A graduate with less academic qualification and developed soft skills is better than a graduate with excellent academic qualification but with less developed soft skills.
In today’s competitive environment both are required however if you can’t have both then don’t ignore the soft skills.
Soft skills will get you there where you wanted to be. You don’t have to worry about your academic qualification. So focus on developing soft skills.
Tips to Develop Soft Skills
Here we give you some tips to develop your soft skills. The thing about soft skills is that you can’t develop it overnight.
You can’t even develop by reading books or just taking up some classes.
Your overall personality is developed over a period of time. First of all you need to have great communication skills. You must have complete command over a language that you speak.
You must feel confident while you are talking to someone. You also have to be great when it comes to team work.
You can do this by daily taking part in co curricular activities. You must be the first one to volunteer yourself when it comes to any task.
Meet all kinds of people, talk to them and share ideas with them. You will always learn new things.
You can also develop your soft skills by joining certain courses like how to speak fluent English, it is a great way to start developing soft skills.
Be active in your school or college.
So this is how you develop your soft skills.