Everything changes and that includes the tactics you need to utilize to get hired in this economy.
There are Old School tactics and there are New School tactics for every facet of job seeking. One key to your success today is knowing how to capitalize on your soft skills. Wondering what your “soft skills” are? Read on!
Old School: Your hard skills (your education, training, and work experience) got you the job.
New School: Your hard skills get you the interview but your soft skills (communication, interpersonal skills, ability to think outside the box to detect patterns or solutions that others do not, adaptability, analytical skills, the ability to learn quickly) get you hired.
Why? Employers are more results-oriented than ever before and seek employees who can generate money or save money by applying their soft skills. As the economy continues to compress downward (the number of job seekers far outweighs the job openings), employers have all the well educated, well trained employees they can handle during the application process. What employers seek are those new employees who can, by using their soft skills, show the promise of generating revenue soon after hire.
You acquire hard skills: you pursue education, you complete training, and you gain work experience.
You are born with soft skills. You either have them or you do not.
Old School: Many corporations use résumé scanning software to match key terms in your résumé to the job posting. For that reason, many people frontload their résumé with the key terms they know the software is seeking. Under “Key Proficiencies,” bullet points such as:
- Excellent communication skills
- Exceptional interpersonal skills
- Experienced in project management
- Skilled in strategic planning.
New School: Yes, software like Resumix, is still seeking those key terms but now you need to show HOW you applied that soft skill for the benefit of your employer. Employers know that soft skills can directly link to the results they seek: generating more income, saving resources, etc. You need to show off your soft skills. Did you build interpersonal relationships with “lost” accounts and generate sales? Perfect!
How has this search for soft skills changed the interviewing process?
Old School: Employer asked about your education and how this contributed to your work success.
New School: Employer asks lots of “How” questions: How did you find a solution to this problem stated on your résumé? How did you accomplish that?
Old School: Employers used the Myers-Briggs Personality Test to uncover your soft skills. (You can take this test online http://www.personalitypathways.com/type_inventory.html if you would like to identify your traits.)
New School: Gallup Organization and others have pioneered new tests which indicate your sales and marketing talents and show how your skills can be integrated within a particular corporate model—which allows your new employer to gain a competitive advantage because they can capitalize on your most applicable soft skills to further their mission.
Are you lacking a soft skill or two? Do not worry. If you are very strong in others, your new employer is intelligent enough to capitalize on your strengths, rather than spend time trying to make you into something you are not. For example, would Coach Tom Landry spend years trying to turn L.A. Lakers basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar into a Dallas Cowboys quarterback? No. Tom would draft Troy Aikman and capitalize on his UCLA quarterbacking skills to hone him into a Super Bowl winning quarterback.
Can you improve the soft skills you have? Absolutely! For instance, you can improve your verbal communication skills by taking a Dale Carnegie course or participating at Toastmaster’s. You can improve your written communication skills by reading books and taking classes. You can improve on your analytical and problem-solving skills by coaching a high school Olympics of the Mind team or volunteering for a non-profit. Why? Because you consistently have to “think outside the box” to solve funding, staffing, and mission problems. In this way, you need to capitalize on what you have and you can build stronger skills. (Yes, you can list volunteer work on your résumé if it demonstrates a skill you can transfer to your work.)
How to Identify Your Soft Skills
Consider what you have accomplished. Identify:
- What challenges you confronted at the outset.
- The actions you took to meet those challenges.
- The benefits which resulted from your actions.
Now do you have a clearer perspective?
- What skills did you utilize to overcome the challenges?
o Did you use your ability to see opportunities overlooked by others?
o Did you use your intuition?
o Did you leverage resources in an innovative way?
List and rank your top six skills. You might think you are a terrific communicator only to discover that your interpersonal skills are far superior. It’s OK: almost everyone discovers new skills after they finish this exercise!
How to Showcase Your Soft Skills on Your Résumé
Old School: “I am an innovative and dedicated professional seeking a new opportunity…”
New School: Let us not use soft skills in the initial branding statement. In fact, let us kick the entire branding statement to the curb because 90% of all interviewers will ignore it. If you have seen one branding statement, you have seen them all.
Where do you showcase your soft skills? Two locations: “Key Proficiencies” and “Professional Experience.” Remember: in “Key Proficiencies,” you are feeding key words to the résumé scanning software. If you feed enough terms in, your résumé has a much better chance of landing on the desk of someone who might hire you.
(Scary statistic: according to one website, 71% of all professional résumés—those from people who are working at manager level and above—are scanned out and never reach the hiring authority because these professionals have not infused their résumés with enough key terms.)
What works:
Key Proficiencies:
- Actively pursuing CPA license. Fulfilled the 150 semester hours. Passed one part.
- Excellent communication skills: Present approved reports to superiors.
- Skilled in strategic planning: Prepared corporate income and franchise tax returns for six different states, coordinating all filing dates.
- Experienced in project management: Analyzed and improved IT accounting operations.
Old School: “I am good leader who is organized.”
New School: “Showcased my leadership and organizational skills by coordinating with multiple departments to develop and maintain a new online bill payment system and all aspects of related reporting and analysis. This new system increased revenue by 20%.”
Your goal is to demonstrate your soft skills within your accomplishments.
Further, anytime you can quantify your accomplishments in terms of dollars or percentages gets you extra points with the interviewer. Your ability to show how your soft skills contributed to your ROI gives an advantage when it comes to getting hired.
How to Showcase Your Soft Skills during Your Interview
Be alert: listen for the “how” questions. This is your opportunity to distinguish yourself from the crowd of competitors.
Step 1: List how your hard skills (education and experience) relate to the question. “My English studies at NAU prepared me to edit occupational safety books for CRC Press, where I learned the facets of a superior safety plan.”
Step 2: Share your strongest soft skills and how they helped you overcome challenges.
“Realizing that ABC Company did not have an OSHA-compliant safety plan, I volunteered to write one. By working with the directors of six facilities and the accounting department, I was able to assemble binders of the first aid responses to over 3,000 chemicals currently in use. Two days after finishing the project, there was a major chemical spill which resulted in the evacuation of our facility and the hospital next door. When OSHA evaluated the chemical safety plan I prepared, they could find nothing wrong, which saved our organization over $50,000 in potential fines on that one issue.” (This shows initiative, adaptability, and the ability to connect disparate elements—all soft skills.)
Or “I achieved a 32% increase in sales because of my ability to develop new accounts with the smaller colleges, thereby single-handedly outselling the three representatives in leading department combined.” (This shows your relationship building skills.)
When you demonstrate your soft skills on your résumé and during the interview, you prove that you head and shoulders above the crowd. This brings you one step closer to getting the job of your dreams.
Subscribe to this blog
