Soft synonym
The high request, and the broadly diffused confusion about the meaning and the training of soft skills represent two elements that can explain the lack of soft skills in the job market. The significance employers give to the topic is shown by the fact that soft skills are now as important as GPA (once considered the most important factor in making decisions) in hiring a new worker. The Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman claims that “soft skills predict success in life, that they casually produce that success, and that programs that enhance soft skills have an important place in an effective portfolio of public policies”. Now, in the 21st century, soft skills are a major differentiator, a sine qua non for employability and success in life. The European Commission launched the program Agenda for new skills and jobs in 2012 in order to train and explain to young adults this new set of skills. The huge amount of fund companies and worldwide organizations are investing in the training and development of this field shows this interest. The more research that is conducted, the more people understand the relevance of this concept. Interest in soft skills has increased over the years. Soft skills make people flexible in a world which keeps changing.
#Soft synonym professional#
Their ductility helps “people to adapt and behave positively so that they can deal effectively with the challenges of their professional and everyday life”. These thinking dispositions consist of a group of abilities that can be used in every aspect of people’s lives, without any need to readapt them based on the situation. The importance of soft skills lies in the fact that they are not restricted to a specific field. A definition based on review literature explains soft skills as an umbrella term for skills under three key functional elements: people skills, social skills, and personal career attributes. These skills can include social graces, communication abilities, language skills, personal habits, cognitive or emotional empathy, time management, teamwork and leadership traits. Soft skills are a cluster of productive personality traits that characterize one's relationships in a social environment. Some companies now offer professional training of soft skills to their employees. Many industries today give prominence to the soft skills of their employees. Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey famously stated that social intelligence, rather than qualitative intelligence, defines humans. They further criticized the state of the concept then as vague with a remark "in other words, those job functions about which we know a good deal are hard skills and those about which we know very little are soft skills." Another immediate study by them also concluded in a negative tone. After designing and processing a questionnaire, experts formulated a new tentative definition: "Soft skills are important job-related skills that involve little or no interaction with machines and whose application on the job is quite generalized." Whitmore presented a report aimed at figuring out how the term "soft skills" is understood in various CONARC schools. Īt the 1972 CONARC Soft Skills Conference, Dr.
#Soft synonym manual#
In 1972, a US Army training manual began the formal usage of the term "soft skills". PG Whitmore cited the CON Reg 350-100-1 definition: "job-related skills involving actions affecting primarily people and paper, e.g., inspecting troops, supervising office personnel, conducting studies, preparing maintenance reports, preparing efficiency reports, designing bridge structures." Army officially introduced a training doctrine known as "Systems Engineering of Training" covered in the document CON Reg 350-100-1. Army has been investing a considerable amount of resources into technology-based development of training procedures. The military realized that many important activities were included within this category, and in fact, the social skills necessary to lead groups, motivate soldiers, and win wars were encompassed by skills they had not yet catalogued or fully studied.
It refers to any skill that does not employ the use of machinery. The term soft skills was created by the U.S.