Soft Skills and Your Resume

Pretend you are a recruiter or a hiring manager.  You are busy shuffling through papers all day long. You spend at most 30 seconds looking at each resume. You wonder why your hires are lackluster and do not improve the business. Maybe you look at a LinkedIn profile. While this is not the HR cultural reality we subscribe to, it’s the reality in today’s “Click-to-Apply” world.  

Since you are career minded and a member of the Tinder generation, we suspect you may have multiple accounts with multiple job boards. Just a guess.  

What soft skills are….

Soft skills for the workplace are things like critical thinking, teamwork, effective communication and resilience. Soft skills are intangible – but they can be transferred to ANY Job. That’s a big advantage for a skill which is usually job specific. It syays the importance of soft skills is about differentiating yourself in the workplace in ways hard skills can’t. 

Examples of Soft Skills….

1. Communication and Collaboration – or soft communication skills.

2. Time Management

3. Networking

4. Empathy

5. Critical Thinking

6. Self-Awareness

We are here for you!

Anyway, we are here for you CareerNet Nation. Since it’s likely you’ll be applying for jobs through Indeed or Ziprecruiter (good luck!) you’ll be aware of the trend to include Soft Skills in your resume.

Confused? We have your back. Here is a link to download our short brochure on Skills, which includes a discussion on soft skills.

We also have your back on applying for jobs through job boards. Here are some hints we believe could help improve your results, highlighting your soft skills.  

•  First, have a look at the job description and see if the company has snuck in a few soft skills in the Requirements or Responsibilities sections. 
• Second, after adding a hard skill example, offer a soft skill example in your experiences sections for each job listed. 
• Third, if you choose to add a cover letter, reference a few soft skills you used in your most recent job. 
• Fourth, review your resume so that you can speak to it during that interview. 
• Fifth, while you are at it, maybe review your social media profiles and add a soft skill or 2 to the description. Just be honest. That alone will make you stand out on LinkedIn.  

Soft Skills and CareerNet Nation

We began looking at soft skills about 10 years ago. We really hadn’t considered them as skills you could train. But we were wrong. We spoke with a few of our training partners and then assembled a series of quick courses that teach you how to identify and build your soft skills resume. Have a look!

Soon we’ll be adding soft leadership skills.

Developing soft skills for you or developing soft skills for a job, a new job, can make the difference in finding that next great job. At CareerNet Nation we design and develop soft skills every day.