Soft skills play a vital role in the success of personal and professional life. The skills are not contradictory but complementary to hard skills which are determined by one’s professional qualification, experience etc. Soft skills is a technical term which is concerned with a wide variety of personal traits, communication, body language, abilities to maintain interpersonal relations, attitude towards life and work, work ethics etc. The skills determines the success in terms of getting good jobs, survive over there for a longer period of time etc.

Soft skills also involve the following:

• level of self confidence,
• curiosity,
• creativity,
• dedication,
• ability to work hard,
• analytic approach,
• empathy,
• consistency in efforts,
• ability to trust in oneself and others,
• ability to manage stress,
• building interpersonal relationship etc.

Why professionals should possess a sound understanding of soft skills?

While recruiting employees, HR managers are not merely interested in the hard skills or professional qualification of the candidates; but they look for finding out those soft skills that are required at the workplace. Hence, it is very important to identify these skills. Employer demands from the candidate, a mixture of various skills required to tackle the assigned tasks given to them. After selection, the candidate has to plan, organize, and coordinate with different people at workplace etc. In order to achieve this 

objective, he has to use these skills whenever and wherever required. That’s why, he need to understand in advance what employer expects from them; and make them prepared accordingly. The skills may be divided into following broad categories:

1. 1. Conceptual Skills: These skills refer to the ability to visualize the company as a complete organizational whole; and to identify interrelationship among various departments of the company. These conceptual skills require good knowledge, and imagination required for planning and formulation of strategy. These skills are also vital for providing solutions to various problems arise at the workplace.

1. 2. Interpersonal Skills: These skills are necessary to work with other people; understand and co operate them; and to be cooperated by them. No success can be achieved alone. It requires a team work to achieve personal and professional success. One of the most important skills employers look for is the communication skills at verbal and non verbal level. Communication is a two way process which involves making interaction with people within and outside the organization. It is through these skills that they can resolve problems of their colleagues and customers, empathizes with them; understand their difficulties, reporting to their managers etc. In later case, the communication may be referred as upward communication. If the boss communicates with his subordinates in the form of notices, circulars, or by telecommunication; then the communication is termed as downward communication. Good communication skills improve the chances of one’s success in any job many fold. In order to ensure this; one has to communicate effectively. These skills may be considered as one of the most important key to success.

1. 3. Technical Skills: These skills are concerned specialized knowledge of a specific field. For example, in this era of information technology, it is expected that one has got the knowledge of computers related to word processing systems like MS word; databases; surfing internet, browsing, using e-mail, search engines etc. If the job demands advanced knowledge of computers; then the knowledge of hardware and application softwares, their programming in different computer language is also expected.

A blend of these skills makes an individual more employable. This is what an employer identifies while making recruitments. Some other qualities which employers look are as follows:

• Qualification;
• Training;
• Intelligence Quotient (IQ): reflected by professional qualification-hard skills;
• Emotional Quotient (EQ): determined by the soft skills one has got;

• Leadership quality;
• Foresight: ability to foresee the problems that might arise at the workplace;
• Maturity; employers are more concerned about one’s emotional maturity i.e. ability to withstand anger, frustration, stress, some unexpected problem etc.;
• Technical knowledge ;
• Positive Attitude;
• Consistency in efforts;
• Human relations attitude;
• Level of self confidence etc.