Soft Skills
Soft Skills
When we talk about CVs and professional experience, we often refer to the importance of soft skills. What are they exactly?
Soft skills are those competences related to our personality and character, in other words to our emotional intelligence. Soft skills can be divided into four main categories: cognitive, interpersonal, fulfilling and managerial. Cognitive skills, for example, refer to our approach to reasoning, thus our process of analysis, problem solving and synthesis. Interpersonal skills, on the other hand, describe our ability to relate to others and to work in team. Our fulfilling skills refer to our initiative and organization, while our managerial skills refer to our capability to delegate work.
Clearly, our soft skills are different from our technical skills, which include the knowledge of a second language or the ability to manage social media. For an employer, our personality and competences are of crucial importance, sometimes even more than our technical skills. In fact, our soft skills can well compensate our lack of experience or a poor junior CV.
Le soft skills
Parlando di CV e esperienza professionale, ci riferiamo sempre più spesso alle soft skills ma, che cosa sono esattamente?
Le soft skills sono quelle competenze legate alla personalità e al carattere di una persona, la cosiddetta intelligenza emotiva. È possibile dividere le soft skills in quattro grandi categorie: cognitive, relazionali, realizzative e manageriali. Quelle cognitive, per esempio, si riferiscono al modo di ragionare di una persona e quindi all’analisi, problem solving e sintesi. Le soft skills relazionali si riferiscono alla gestione dei rapporti interpersonali o alla capacità di team work. Le capacità realizzative riguardano la nostra iniziativa e organizzazione, mentre quelle manageriali si riferiscono alla nostra capacità di delegare.
Come potrete notare, le soft skills si distinguono chiaramente dalle competenze tecniche, come il saper parlare una lingua o il saper usare i social media. Per il datore di lavoro, la personalità e le capacità che vi sono legate sono molto importanti, a volte anche più delle conoscenze tecniche. Infatti, le soft skills possono compensare la mancanza di esperienza o un curriculum un po’ debole.
Center for Career Services & Continuing Education
John Cabot University
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