Want the Hard Truth Soft Skills Can Make or Break Your Job Search

Want the Hard Truth Soft Skills Can Make or Break Your Job Search Workers in tech-centric roles are right to be proud of the technical skills they’ve acquired over the course of their educations and careers. These skills are hard won and are imperative to their success in their chosen fields. However, a recent study suggests that recruiters today have a soft spot for soft skills, regardless of the role they are looking to fill. Even in careers where soft skills haven’t historically held a ton of weight – such as software development and accounting, for example – employers are now looking for candidates who are the whole package. In other words, it’s critical today that workers, even ones in highly technical jobs, demonstrate that they also possess soft skills.To start, let’s define what a tech-centric job is exactly. According to LiveCareer’s recently released 2018 Skills Gap Report, researchers defined tech-centric jobs as those jobs for which some form of higher education is required to perform the role. These jobs typically rely heavily on a bevy of hard skills – or skills that can be learned and measured.(This contrasts with soft-centric occupations, which are defined as roles that don’t require formal training or higher education. These roles include bartenders, customer service representatives, and sales associates, among others.)To better understand the skills that employers want – and to compare those skills to the ones that jobseekers are listing on their resumes – the study took a â€Å"big data† approach to analyzing thousands of resumes and job ads across 12 different occupations. The question the study sought to answer is this one: is the skills gap is real, or are jobseekers just underreporting their skill sets in resumes?Jobseekers in tech-centric occupations should analyze the study’s most arresting findings on soft skills to increase the likelihood of success in the job market. Some key finding to consider include:The s tudy found that – across the board – employers increasingly value customer service and communications skills. In fact, job ads in 11 of the 12 occupational types list customer service as among the most desirable skills.This means that even in jobs where customer service isn’t traditionally a requirement – such as accountants, teachers, and registered nurses – employers expect jobseekers to make those skills a focus today.Communication skills appear in job ads for 12 of the 12 occupation types that the study focused on, meaning all jobseekers should place an emphasis on this soft skill in their resumes.Tech-centric employers demand largely the same soft skills as customer-facing employers. In fact, three of the top five required soft skills in both occupational categories are the same.Jobseekers in all professions are listing far too few skills on their resumes, overall. Individual job ads, on average, contain 21.8 skills. Resumes, on average, conta in only 13 skills.It’s not surprising that tech-centric workers aren’t emphasizing soft skills since job ads for these professions are asking for 4.25x more hard skills than soft skills. However, the report also found that since employers increasingly value customer service and communications skills in candidates, jobseekers who neglect to thoroughly list soft skills on their resumes may be doing themselves a disservice.The takeaway for jobseekers in tech-centric occupations: shine a light on those intangible but increasingly important soft skills on your resume; they matter just as much as your hard skills. In fact, jobseekers who can clearly communicate their soft skills to potential employers – both in their resumes and in job interviews – will have an advantage over those candidates who cannot.Experts agree that the best way to accomplish this goal is for jobseekers to concentrate on learning how to write a resume in such a way that it mimics the lang uage of a job ad. This ensures that they are including all the most valuable skills cited in the job post, and it will also help get their resumes past an applicant tracking system (ATS), which many employers use today to screen out unqualified candidates.Wording is of key importance, because most ATSs don’t understand nuance in language, which means you must echo the language the ads use precisely in resumes. Fail to do so and you risk being eliminated from the running, even as a qualified candidate. How precisely do you need to match the wording? Exactly. If a job ad asks for â€Å"solid verbal communication skills,† and you list writing â€Å"solid oral communication skills,† you could be knocked out of the running!Jobseekers can find additional learnings, plus a PDF download of the report, via the 2018 Skills Gap Report link at the beginning of the article.LiveCareer bio:Need more guidance on how to incorporate soft skills into your resume? Peruse LiveCareer ’s free resume examples, and see how other successful professionals have expressed those skills in their resumes. All examples are arranged by industry and job title. And if you need help building a resume from the ground up, try our free, easy-to-use Resume Builder.

What Do Passovers 4 Questions Have to Do with Our Modern Lives

What Do Passovers 4 Questions Have to Do with Our Modern Lives Passover started last Monday night and I was fortunate enough to attend a lovely seder (traditional Passover meal) with a family here in Madison. What especially impressed me was that they were open to discussing the contemporary implications of the traditional â€Å"four questions† (which are actually one question followed by four answers). The Four Questions Why is this night different from all other nights? On all other nights we eat leavened products and matzah [unleavened, cardboard-like â€Å"bread†], and on this night only matzah. On all other nights we eat all vegetables, and on this night only bitter herbs. On all other nights, we dont dip our food even once, and on this night we dip twice. On all other nights we eat sitting or reclining, and on this night we only recline. The explanation for each of the four items goes something like this: We eat matzah because the bread on the backs of the Jews fleeing Egypt did not have enough time to rise. The bitter herbs remind us of the bitterness of slavery in Egypt. Dipping karpas (potato, onion, or other vegetable) into saltwater reminds us that the joy of spring was tempered by the tears we cried while in Egypt. Similarly, the charoset (fruit-nut paste) into which the bitter herbs are dipped reminds us of the cement we used to create the bricks in Egypt. Again, a mix of sweetness and bitterness. Reclining like â€Å"royalty† is a way to commemorate our freedom. Now you might be saying, Thanks for the lesson in Jewish religion, but what does any of this have to do with business or job search activities? Well, let me tell you. The Four Questions in Our Modern Lives Remembering the matzah means remembering that if we rush around without giving ourselves time and space for our bread to rise, we will end up with a cardboard life. It’s the equivalent of sending out a mediocre resume or blindly taking action in a business without stepping back to strategize and consider the implications of those actions. Will we get results? Sure. But maybe not the robust ones we’re hoping for. It’s important during Passover to actually EAT matzah, not just avoid leavened food. Why? Because if we don’t eat the unleavened bread we will forget not to eat leavened food. It’s like saying Oh, I’ll remember to call x person back but not putting it on the calendar, then realizing at the end of the day that it never happened. Or saying I won’t spend 3 hours on Facebook today but failing to put any structures in place to make that happen. If we don’t eat the matzah- if we don’t create a structure for remembering- we are in danger of forgetting and falling into our routine lives. Does this ring true for you? We all have bitter moments to remember in our lives. We have been rejected for our dream jobs. We have had clients asking for refunds. We have made poor, often costly decisions. We have had great ideas that bombed. It’s important to remember the bitterness of those moments, even as we move on into freer and more successful times. We will then appreciate our successes more and have greater perspective when things take what seems like a bitter turn. On Passover we dip a symbol of new growth into a symbol of sadness, then dip something bitter into something sweet yet representative of pain. Perhaps we dip twice because if we only dipped once we would forget. Forget how growing pains are not just something we have as children, but a fact of life for anyone committed to their own personal development. Forget that every move forward requires letting go of the way it was before. A new job might mean saying goodbye to trusted colleagues or spending less time at home with the kids. Taking on more leadership might mean leaving a comfort zone that was, well, comfortable. Life is a mix of bitter and sweet always, and if we forget, if we start expecting it to be some other way, we are likely to become even more bitter. The commandment to recline like royalty is a great reminder to take care of ourselves and allow ourselves to be taken care of. It means taking a break from rushing around without allowing time for the bread to rise. Whatever it represents for you, consider in this season giving yourself the gift of luxuriating just a little in the abundance and joy that surrounds you. I would love to hear your interpretation of Passover or Easter themes and how they relate to your personal or professional lives. Please share!