How Do They Compare When Hiring a New Employee?

Many companies are facing a revolution when it comes to how they hire and retain employees. There is a severe shortage of workers, despite the highest unemployment rate following COVID-19.

Employers received Creative in the way they find and train employeesAnd they learn in many cases, it is better to train them in the skills they need instead of expecting employees who already have these skills.

With that in mind, we often hear about hard versus soft skills.

Understanding the distinction between hard and soft skills is important for employers, recruiters and employees alike.

Here are some important things to know when looking at hard and soft skills and how they compare and contrast.

What are difficult skills?

Difficult skills are usually technical skills you have learned through a combination of your education and career.

Every job will have Technical skills specific to this position and the industry.

Often, there are tests in place to make sure the employee has the complex technical skills he claims to have.

Difficult skills are usually abilities that can be taught. It is relatively easy to quantify them.

Specific examples of difficult skills include:

  • Knowledge of a foreign language
  • Coding or computer programming skills
  • Holds a degree
  • Holder of a professional certificate
  • Know how to operate type of machines
  • Google Data Analysis
  • writing
  • Search Engine Optimization

Difficult skills tend to be attached to certain technologies or tasks.

What are soft skills?

Soft skill is not so measurable and concrete, hence the term soft. It is not easy to learn soft skills in class or to teach. It is unlikely that you have acquired these formal education skills. Instead, they are either traits that you have by nature or things that you have developed over time.

Sometimes, we hear soft skills described as related to how you approach your work. For example, being a problem solver is a soft skill.

Interpersonal skills also tend to fall under the larger umbrella of soft skills.

Other soft skills especially sought after by employers include:

  • critical thinking
  • Troubleshooting
  • empathy
  • leadership
  • organization
  • Confidence
  • Work ethic

How can these skills be assessed?

If you are an employer, you may be wondering how to assess both types of skills, although it tends to be easier with difficult skills.

There are some general things to know.

First, no matter what job you are recruiting for, employees need a combination of hard and soft skills to be a valuable and successful employee. They can neither accept one another nor perform at a record level.

A job applicant’s hard and soft skills will usually play into each other, and knowing how to recruit for both is critical.

To measure difficult skills, you can often use quantifiable data.

For example, you can evaluate candidates or employees with test scores, success in certain projects, or how well they meet schedules.

The skill either exists or it does not.

Soft skills take longer and have more nuances.

If you already have someone on board, you can Evaluate their soft skills through performance reviews And observation.

If you are still in the recruitment stage, how do you assess soft skills?

Here are some tips:

  • Use both physical and social cues. For example, consider how a job applicant interacts not only with you but with other people in the office, such as other candidates or the person at the front desk. You also want to pay attention to body language, like if they are sitting upright or how they are communicating with you. You want to see how much someone might fit into your corporate culture by starting to gauge these behaviors early on.
  • If a candidate tells you he has a soft skill, ask him for examples of when they specifically implemented these.
  • You can also test soft skills in real world scenarios. For example, set something up with other people in the office and see how they react.

You can train an employee on both hard and soft skills, but in fact it is more difficult for him to learn soft skills if he does not already have them. It’s not impossible, but it’s challenging.

This is what many forward-thinking companies think more about the soft skills when they recruit, thinking they can catch the employee on the hard skills later on through training, mentoring and opportunities for employee development.

In a complex job market, this may be the best route.

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