If you are thinking of starting a personnel selection process in your company, taking into account the soft and hard skills of your candidates will help you find an optimal and qualified profile to meet each of the challenges posed in your business. Would you like to know the associated qualities? Do you recognize their importance? We let you know in this article!

What are soft and hard skills?

Soft and hard skills, also known in the business world as soft skills and hard skills, are essential today to achieve the proper functioning of a company. So, in TAS Consulting we take the task of explaining how they differ and what are those skills that you should consider relevant within your team.

Soft skills

When we talk about soft skills within a company, we refer to those interpersonal characteristics that define the way in which a person is able to work in a team.

Nowadays, companies not only focus on hiring people with a high level of education and culture, but also take as a relevant point to consider the ability to get along with the members of the various departments, be empathetic and communicate efficiently in their daily work.

Main soft skills

Now, you may be wondering what are the soft skills that make an employee stand out in your company? Below, we describe the most relevant ones:

Communication

It sounds basic and it is thought that everyone complies with it, but getting a worker to express himself clearly and listen to you at the same time is not always easy to achieve.  In this sense, you are looking for a person who expresses in an appropriate and respectful way what is happening in their workplace to ensure the fulfillment of business objectives.

Positive attitude

This aspect is essential for the well-being of both the employee and the company itself, since the attitude with which the activities to be performed are processed will be fundamental to maintain an adequate work environment in your company.

Teamwork

As already mentioned, a soft skill that is most important in organizations is the ability to work as part of a team.

The workers that form part of your company must be willing to negotiate with their colleagues, participate, recognize successes, as well as accept criticism and recommendations for the benefit of the proposed goals.

Responsiveness

In addition to being able to communicate adequately, the ideal candidate profile to lead your business to success must be decisive and have an efficient response capacity according to each situation that may arise in their day-to-day work.

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Hard skills

In relation to hard skills, they are understood as a set of knowledge that the person has acquired through his or her professional career and for which he or she can be trained through an educational program.

In general, the presence of hard skills are traditional competencies that are learned by experts in the field and improved over time.

Likewise, in addition to the presence of knowledge and experience in an area, hard skills also correspond to the fulfillment of factors such as knowledge about the operation of the company, structuring and analysis, as well as absolute mastery of a subject.

Main hard skills

In the case of the hard skills most in demand in companies we can find the following:

Computer skills

Regardless of the business field in which you focus, companies are currently interested in highly trained people in terms of technology, as well as in the proper use of basic hardware and software that enhance the work within the team.

Finance skills

Considering that every business wants to be profitable, finance skills are often an indispensable and appealing point for human resources. For this reason, people with knowledge are required to perform accounting, issue expense reports, manage accounts, among other requirements.

Marketing and design skills

With the main objective of increasing sales and increasing a company’s customers, marketing skills are increasingly in demand within a company, which makes it a hard skill to be considered a hard skill in a worker.

 Project and strategy management

Talking about project management as a hard skill implies the interest of organizations in having personnel who know how to manage at a managerial level to comply with the previously stipulated action plan.

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Importance of balance in soft and hard skills.

It is normal for companies to take hard skills into account and recognize the merit for the experience and knowledge of their workers, but did you know that during the recruitment of personnel, the presence of soft skills is increasingly valued?

In fact, according to a 2019 LinkedIn survey of human resources professionals, it was revealed that these soft skills represent the number one trend in the labor market, thus being considered essential for business success and an intangible resource that can make the difference with competitors.

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Thus, when selecting personnel for your company, it is important that you take into account that your team has a balance between soft and hard skills, to ensure the success of your company.

And, if you feel you need support to train your employees or perform an optimal selection process, at TAS Consulting we have experts to guarantee an efficient social management within your company, enter our blog and contact us today!