What Must-Have Soft Skills Are You Missing to Nail that Job Offer?

By landing on this article, you have committed to building soft skills.

But more importantly...you will commit to action.

The good news is you can learn soft skills, and you're not BORN with it.

I want to share with you the soft skills I focused on that accelerated my career and changed my life.

I used to solely focus on technical skills, including getting as many letters after my name as possible. I didn't focus on building soft skills until I became a Manager.

Why did I become self-aware then? Well, when you are leading a team, it's so much more than giving directions. The team comprises people with different needs, motivations, personalities, working styles and ambitions.

If you don't know how to steer these variances in one direction, the team will lead the manager astray.

Hence, I realised how crucial it was to build my soft skills.

Building grit, communication, and managing expectations were essential for my development to thrive and, at times, survive in the corporate world.

It's never too late to focus on soft skills, and I am still building my toolkit or fine-tuning some of those skills now that I am a solopreneur.

So what do soft skills have to do with job search?

Your CV, usually outlining your experience and skills, will get you to an interview.

But what's in the CV only communicates a part of your story.

When you get to that interview, if you can't demonstrate your soft skills, the chances of nailing that job diminishes as the interview hour counts down.

Think about this, all the candidates going to interviews would have similar TECHNICAL skills. Your soft skills and culture fit set you apart from the others.

From my years of coaching professionals on interview preparation, I always help prepare questions on soft skills. 10/10 times the coachees gave feedback to me on how they got asked the questions we prepared.

It is not a coincidence that having over 150 coachees in the last year saying the same thing, they got asked soft skills questions.

What if I am looking for a promotion?

Same thing! If you're stepping up, your manager wants to entrust you with more responsibilities and senior management exposure and develop your team.

Technical skills won't get you far if your team doesn't support you.

Your ability to do a Power BI report won't help if you can't communicate with management about the insights and influence action.

So now, can you see how important it is to focus on soft skills?

The hard skills' hard truth

With the pace of technology and innovation, technical skills can become obsolete very quickly.

However, soft skills don't go out of fashion; they are transferrable to any industry or professional and help you with life (such as communication and negotiation with teenage kids on housework and rules).

I have firsthand experience benefiting from the value of soft skills in my career, including my career change.

It's become even more valuable when I help at an intellectual disability service, where these skills are crucial when communicating with intellectually disabled participants.

Trust me, the reward from these soft skills will pay you back for a lifetime.

So what are the five super soft skills that helped me – and can help you?

Flexibility

Being flexible in a changing environment is critical. We are constantly under change. I had lost count of how many "transformation" projects I have been part of, and when that happened, I adjusted, adapted and showed flexibility to my teams, business partners and the boss.

This flexibility also means adjusting your processes, role, attitude and mindset. Even better, if you can anticipate the change, stretch and be flexible as soon as the change comes.

This ability also helped me build new skills along the way, learning new things and quick transition.

See any change as an opportunity, not an enemy.

Creativity

I have learned that creativity is not about designing the most awesome design, painting, or drawing. It's linked to problem-solving with original thinking.

With automation becoming our daily lives, we need to stay on top of how to evolve and solve problems.

Also, to look outside your industry or role and curate similar ways of doing things into your role is another skill. It inspires and sparks new ideas by looking at different things.

A concept discussed in the "Blue Ocean Strategy" book by W.Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne.

As an accountant, I never imagined myself doing videos, using Canva or creating programs. It's a skill that can be learned and still focused on.

Not to mention the fun I have creating things from scratch. That satisfaction is addictive because, let's face it, doing a spreadsheet for budget over and over can be monotonous (except for changing the colours and adding a few more graphs).

The content I apply creativity is limitless.

Persuasive Communication

I can't emphasise how much this skill has benefited me, and it's not a skill only for sales professionals.

Whether you sell an idea, a program or yourself, it's critical to guide or convince your audience. This skill goes hand-in-hand with influencing others.

By mastering this skill, you can navigate the challenging situation, resolve conflicts and articulate plans to rally people to support you or work for you. You get the buy-in.

I have learned that the foundation of this skill comes from building trust first. Without this trust, it isn't easy to pull it off.

As a manager, this skill will give you an edge to motivate and engage your team, and taking it up a level, use it to inspire.

Part of persuading someone is to practice active listening. We have two ears and one mouth.

It's not only being attentive but also includes asking open-ended questions, prob, seeking clarification and paraphrasing.

Connecting With Others

Connecting with all types of people and personalities has helped me collaborate and work in a team. I have leveraged my empathy and compassion to make the connection.

Stepping into someone's shoes is essential to understand their point of view and feelings while you hold back judgement.

By learning from all these different connections, I have built my perspectives, understand how to serve others and tackle sensitive situations, especially HR-related matters in the workplace and personal life.

However, I have also learned that being compassionate or empathetic is not being "nice". As a leader, connecting with people also means making tough choices regarding performance management. I have learned from my mistakes of starting out wanting to be liked as a manager by everyone.

That didn't get me anywhere. So, the connection must be balanced. Once again, trust must be the foundation.

Negotiation

We negotiate all the time. Negotiation is not trained in the corporate environment. From my 24 years of corporate life, I never received any training (other than the Sales teams), and it's a soft skill that applies to every profession.

Negotiation wraps up many subsets of skills such as actively listening, asking crafty questions, problem-solving and critical thinking.

I learned a lot from working with the Sales team, and this skill fascinates me and also got me scared. I can't even bargain in a Thai market, where you haggle for fun or not get ripped off. But I have learned to like it, and now, I am negotiating all the time and not even aware of it.

This is the skill I am continuously working on because not every negotiation is a carbon copy of another.

My coachees' most common interview question is, have you negotiated with your stakeholders on priorities and deadlines 😉. This question comes up 9/10 times!

What advice would I give my younger self…

Soft skills are crucial in anyone's career; they come in handy personally. The soft skills I mentioned here all work together to give you all the superpowers you need.

I would tell my younger self to start from day one to pick up soft skills. I have now used this advice on my daughter, who's working at a cafe, dealing with people. The learning she's received so far is not in any textbook or classrooms.

Also, qualifications and technical skills are essential, but it's not the end all be all.

More importantly, build soft skills relating to people. After all, we are all in the business of dealing with people, one way or another.

So, what action will you take to build your toolkit in soft skills? You can learn for yourself or someone ahead of you with many resources available.

If you don't know where to start building soft skills to nail that promotion or want to learn how to demonstrate it in an interview, reach out. Maybe I can help you take action because, after all, that's what you landed on in this article...to take action and move forward.

Don't forget that soft skills don't go out of fashion – not in our lifetime!

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