Centro de Idiomas

Soft skills are personal attributes that enhance an individual's interactions, job performance and hard skills that tend to be specific to a certain type of task or activity. It also refers to social gracefulness, and fluency in languages, personal habits, friendliness and optimism that mark to varying degrees. Soft skills complement hard skills, which are the technical requirements of a profession. It can also be an important part of the organization especially if the organization is dealing with people face to face (Pachauri & Yadav, 2014).

The job market today is a dynamic and challenging sphere for young people graduating from various educational institutions; the job opportunities are more for graduates who possess employability skills that are expected at workplaces. But only about 30% of the candidates who appear for interviews get selected (Nisha & Rajasekaran, 2018) and one of the main reasons is due to lack of proficiency in English and the employable skills necessary for professionals today. In certain cases, some companies are even emphasizing more on soft skills instead of hard skills (Ramlan & Ngah, 2015).

“You can give lifetime employability by training people, by making them adaptable, making them mobile to go other places to do other things. But you can’t guarantee life time employment.”—Jack Welch.

Soft skills are very important to enhance employability.

Soft skills need to be enhanced in students to make them competent enough to meet the demands of the current job market.