by Monika Sziron, Ph.D.
Did you know that the term ‘soft skills’ originates from the U.S. Army? In Episode 9 of The HigherEdJobs Podcast, Kelly and Andy interview Eileen Meyer on the topic of soft skills.
“They started to use the term around the late sixties, early seventies, and they settled on it because there’s no equipment associated with these skills and there’s no way to measure soft skills fluency. So soft in this context, it wasn’t a judgment. The army recognized that leaders rely on these skills. So, they weren’t trying to downplay the importance of them by calling them soft skills. The term instead was an assessment of how these skills compared with the way that people enact and measure other kinds of skills. It’s not that the skills themselves are less important than other skills” Eileen says.
Eileen notes that according to recent employment reports, there are significant skill gaps in the workplace that relate to areas of social fluency and utilizing soft skills. It may be an opportune time right now to highlight your soft skills on your resume and in your next interview to fill the skill gaps some institutions are facing.
When it comes to highlighting your soft skills in a job interview, if an employer isn’t worried about the quality of your soft skills Andy says, “the employer has just done you a favor.” It could be a red flag that you probably wouldn’t be a good fit there, especially if they don’t value the soft skills you can add to the culture of the institution.
Eileen mentions that “if in the job ad you see that they are looking for soft skills…I’ve seen that more companies are kind of updating their job postings to include a call-out for soft skills…I think it’s a great opportunity to mention yours.”
Kelly stresses that using our empathy and our soft skills to understand how to connect with people in our workplace is one of the most important things we can do as professionals.
Listen to the full episode to hear more advice on utilizing your soft skills in the workplace and how to successfully highlight yours in your next job interview.
