When considering someone for a job, what do you look at? Chances are, you would scan through the candidate’s CV. What, in particular, would you focus on? 

Are you confirming that the candidate has been in a similar job in the same industry? Are you also looking for signs that the candidate has been doing well in that job?

More often than not, you are probably looking for hard skills, expertise, experience or qualifications specific to certain jobs and/or industries. These might include functional skills in human resources like recruiting, or technical skills like proficiency in the Angular Web application framework. Unfortunately, hard skills are usually not transferable across many different jobs or life situations.

Distinguishing Soft Traits

Now, think about your best co-worker or employee. What is it about him/her that really stands out?

Does he/she exhibit strong leadership potential? Is he/she a great team player? Does he/she communicate effectively?

These are soft traits. Rather than being learned like hard skills, soft traits are more innate in each of us and are generally relevant across different jobs and life situations.

As you can see, a mix of both hard skills and soft traits is required for people to excel at their jobs. Some would even say that hard skills are “hygiene factors” to undertake the job, whereas soft traits are what distinguish good employees from great ones.

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