Adding soft skills to hard-core technical skills can give you the edge you need to get a job and to be successful in your career.
Simply put, soft skills are the nontechnical skills and traits that workers need to function in a specific employment environment, such as communications, problem-solving, working as a team member and others. Soft skills are not frills – they are polished habits and social and teamwork skills that set you apart from others.
At Montcalm Community College, soft skills instruction is part of the college’s curriculum.
“We teach soft skills in every class,” says Rob Spohr, MCC dean of Occupational Education. “There isn’t a specific class that students can take to learn soft skills. Instead, traits such as team building, leadership skills, critical thinking, interpersonal communication, cultural awareness and problem-solving are integrated into our curriculum.
“The best part of teaching soft skills is that they will help students in every situation they are in. The more soft skills training is integrated into everyday education, the more successful our students will be in the workplace,” Spohr says.
Bill Guest, president and chief executive officer of Metrics Reporting, Inc., a Grand Rapids consulting firm that specializes in workforce development projects, classifies soft skills into three categories – personal, organizational and career.
Personal soft skills “are behaviors that make you welcome in many places. We’re talking basic civility,” Guest says. “This is about how you behave so you’re not offensive to others in public.”
Guest says it’s important to think about bathing, grooming, tattoos, body hardware and clothing when seeking a job.
Organizational soft skills focus on behaviors that are appropriate in a specific setting. For example, screaming and cheering for the winning team is expected at a football game, but that same behavior is best kept out of business meetings.
Guest defines career soft skills as risky behaviors, personal traits and characteristics, interests and values.
“This is about understanding where you fit – finding a career that will be rewarding for you and will lead to a good job, which in turn will give you a better life,” Guest says.
Businesses want soft skills
In the workplace, boosting the bottom line, increased competition and globalization are three of the driving forces behind business leaders’ increasing demand for a broader skill set.
Research recently conducted with Fortune 500 CEOs by the Stanford Research Institute International and the Carnegie Melon Foundation found that 75 percent of long-term job success depends on people skills, while only 25 percent on technical knowledge.
Bob Byram, branch manager of Isabella Bank in Stanton and an MCC student, says communication and teamwork are vital to linking technical competencies with soft skills.
“Soft skills differentiate a company from its competitor and are largely attributed to overall success in the workplace,” Byram says. “In our business, we need people who display strong communication skills in order to be successful. Clients invest their time and money not only in the product or service they are receiving, but also in the person they are working with.
“People do business with people,” Byram says. “Having strong people skills is the basis for building trust and rapport with clients. In the workplace, technical skills can be taught; however, people skills are needed to establish relationships.”
MCC Dean of Arts and Sciences Gary Hauck says that soft skills “are not about control. Soft skills are all about how we relate to those around us in meaningful and helpful ways. Leaders and teachers who possess soft skills affirm and encourage others. They do not seek control, but desire to empower. They know how to have crucial conversations in a constructive manner. The soft skills they possess include the ability to facilitate, collaborate, understand diversity, negotiate and practice the sensitivity of emotional intelligence.”
Byram agrees.
“I believe that soft skills increase both accuracy and productivity at work,” Byram says. “Typically, the stronger an individual’s soft skills, the more confident they are in their abilities, and the more friendly they are. With these personality traits, people are usually quite engaged in their job. As a result, they are more focused and accurate, they enjoy being at work and are more productive overall.”
Spohr says that globalization has brought the need for innovation to happen at a more rapid pace.
“It used to be that businesses could take a year to roll out a new product. Now that time frame is down to about eight weeks,” Spohr says. “It has become increasingly important for every department to work together to get that product out as fast as possible in order to beat the competition.”
Further, Spohr says that “soft skills allow people to understand cultural differences and to be able to work through problems that cultural differences cause. The bottom line is that people with soft skills are able to better communicate and interact with people in different countries.”
In today’s marketplace, companies such as United Solar Ovonic in Greenville realize the importance of soft skills and have incorporated soft skills assessment testing into their hiring process.
Nate Nolan, human resources manager with United Solar Ovonic, says the “ability to think through problems, resolve conflict and communicate with others” is essential.
“One of the traits that really separate candidates when they apply for a job here is attitude,” Nolan says. “People can physically and mentally do a lot of the jobs. The challenge is trying to get that cultural fit – that’s where soft skills are important.
“We look for strong interpersonal skills,” Nolan says, “such as the ability to work on a team, the ability to recognize and understand the business and product flows, the ability to predict problems, see things happening and understand how they all fit together.”
Nolan says the company relies on the WorkKeys assessment test to help identify potential employees. The test verifies that potential employees have essential core employability skills in reading for information, applied mathematics and locating information.
“If they pass the WorkKeys test, we are fairly confident that they have the capacity to learn the technical piece of the job,” Nolan says. “Finding that cultural fit – getting people in that right seat on the bus – is important because a lot of folks can do the job, but if it’s not truly the right fit, it just doesn’t work.”
Soft skills in the classroom
At age 37, Sara Stockwell returned to MCC to pursue a degree in accounting.
For 14 years, she owned and operated her own child care business, most recently caring for about 50 children in a child care and preschool center near Greenville. During that time, Stockwell employed up to eight people. Soft skills, she says, made the difference in the level of service she and her employees provided.
“Soft skills are vital to the success of a business, especially if it is customer oriented,” Stockwell says. “Using good interpersonal skills and being able to think critically increases productivity and helps to reduce conflicts with clients and business associates.”
At MCC, Stockwell says she learns soft skills in each of her classes.
“I see a lot of team building in the classroom,” she says.
Working in groups on projects, she says, teaches valuable skills in teamwork as well as conflict resolution.
Byram says he “is amazed at the variety of courses he has taken at MCC that have helped me advance my soft skills.”
He says one instructor’s emphasis on correct spelling and grammar in an interpersonal communication course at MCC made him realize the importance of these skills. “From a professional standpoint, if you have poor spelling and grammar, you will have poor communication skills, which will inhibit success and career advancement in any profession.”
How do you measure up?
If you want to identify your strengths and where you need improvement in the soft skills arena visit www.bettersoftskills.com/quiz. Upon completion, you will receive feedback about which of your soft skills areas need improvement and customized advice from Peggy Klaus, author of “The Hard Truth About Soft Skills — Workplace Lessons Smart People Wish They’d Learned Sooner.”
This article is reprinted from MCC’s Winter 2009 edition of Career Focus magazine. Visit http://www.montcalm.edu/cf/winter2009/index.asp to view the magazine.