Before you apply to any job, it’s essential to understand your goals and how your specific skill set can be beneficial. According to Ticket to Work, you’ll want to look at your technical and soft skills to see if a job is a good match.
What are soft skills?
Soft skills are the ‘people’ skills that characterize how a person interacts with other people—either one-on-one or in team settings. For example, good communication—both to understand and to be understood—is a soft skill. By contrast, hard skills are learned and are usually job-specific, such as coding for an information technology job or cooking as a chef.
In addition to communication, soft skills include teamwork, networking, problem solving and professionalism. Another important soft skill is attitude, specifically a positive one. You know how you feel when you’re with friendly, respectful and enthusiastic people. Well, employers want those kinds of people, too.
What are technical skills?
Hard skills, also known as technical skills, are gained through education or performing various tasks. Often, technical skills are specific to a particular job or career. For example, if you apply for a position in cybersecurity, the employer will be more interested in your knowledge of programming and technology than your customer service skills. Reading a position description will help you identify which skills an employer might value most.
If you need assistance matching your military experience to a civilian job, visit the skill transfer tool on Military.com or CareerOneStop’s websites to see how you can best showcase your technical skills.
Why are soft skills valued?
No matter what kind of work a company or organization performs, they have customers, shareholders, vendors, clients and employees with whom they must have a solid relationship to stay in business. It makes sense for employers to hire people who can help them build and maintain those relationships.
Employers, of course, want people who can perform the technical parts of a job. For example, no one wants to hire a lousy coder for a coding job. However, if the coder can’t work with the website administrator, that part of the business can fail and affect the customers who want to place orders.
People who work in customer service are the front line for many companies. Understanding what the customer needs (listening), figuring out how to solve their issue (problem-solving) and letting them know how you can help them (communicating) are all soft skills.
How do technical skills transfer?
Technical skills, like soft skills, can apply to many jobs. To know which technical skills you should have before applying, look under the job listing’s required qualifications or education and experience section. There, you will find a list of the skills an employer seeks.
For example, an advertisement for a position as an assistant grower in a greenhouse might list minimum qualifications such as:
- Intermediate math skills
- Solid reading skills
- Ability to accurately identify irrigation needs for various crops
Your resume and cover letter should explain how and where you have used these skills previously and why you think your experience will benefit the employer.
Taking inventory of your skills
Concerning soft skills, take some time to think about the types of tasks and responsibilities at which you excel. Are you good at making others happy by finding solutions to problems? Are you good at explaining complicated ideas to others? Do you enjoy creating new ways to stay organized? When you’re ready to apply for a job, you can use your application, resume and cover letter to your advantage by mentioning some of the skills above that most closely fit your skill set and relate to the job.
When analyzing your technical skills, think about the tasks you did with them rather than the associated job or career. When you finish writing down your skills, compare your list with jobs you are interested in and see how the skills help you qualify. This way, you can identify areas where you need more training or experience for your desired job.
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