Hard Skills vs Soft Skills [How to list these on a Resume?]

Skills are an integral part of resumes and cover letters and employers look for two kinds of skills on resumes, hard skills, and soft skills.

Hard skills vs soft skills is a question that comes in everyone’s mind, and arises some more related questions. 

In this article, we will try to cover all those questions and answer them for you to understand the whole thing in the easiest way possible. 

This guide will show you:

1. What is a hard skill?
2. List of hard skills.
3. What is a soft skill?
4. List of soft skills.
5. Hard skills vs soft skills.
6. Importance of hard skills and soft skills on a resume. 

Now let us move on with this article filled with needful questions and answers you need to know for a good knowledge of skills. 

What is a hard skill?

Hard skills are also known as technical skills. Hard skill is the technical knowledge you gain through any work or life experience or education experience. 

For example: Having “working knowledge about Java” or “expert knowledge about MS Office” is considered a technical skill.

Every job demands and needs a certain amount of technical knowledge. Even if you are from a creative background, at some point you may need to use a computer and the computer asks for only technical skills. Maintaining sheets, creating presentations, using any computer document, and so on. 

Nowadays, mobile phones are the basic need of every person and even mobile phones demand a minimum amount of technical knowledge. 

Bottom line is that hard skills are for anyone and everyone. 

List of Hard/Technical Skills

There are hundreds of technical skills, here are a few examples;

1. Accounting
2. Adobe Audition
3. Adobe Illustrator
4. Adobe InDesign
5. Adobe Photoshop
6. Adobe XD
7. Advance Excel
8. AJAX
9. Algorithms
10. Analytics
11. Android
12. AngularJS
13. Animations
14. ANSYS
15. Application Development and Programming

At cvDragon, you can get help with a lot more key phrases and tips to improve your CV.

What is a soft skill?

Unlike hard skills, soft skills are subjective knowledge people gain through life experiences and teachings.

For example: If you have been active in all the school activities, you must be good at soft skills. 

Soft skills are personal hobbies and traits that shape how you work and behave with others. As you need hard skills to perform technical tasks, similarly you need soft skills to maintain a healthy work environment and colleague relations. 

For example: If you are an HR, lacking prior knowledge in technical skills may pull you down but at the same time soft skills can be a plus point for you. 

Every employer looks for a candidate who can interact with their team and can create a good working ambiance for everyone around, with your interpersonal/people skills. 

List of soft skills:

Here is a list of some common soft skills.

1. Ability to understand new concepts
2. Ability to accept criticism
3. Ability to deal
4. Able to follow directions
5. Active listener
6. Adaptable
7. Analytical Thinking
8. Approachable
9. Assertive
10. Attentive
11. Building relationships
12. Business Etiquette
13. Business Intelligence
14. Calm
15. Co-operative
16. Coaching
17. Communication
18. Competitive

With cvDragon you can get help with a lot more key phrases and tips to improve your CV.

Hard skills vs Soft skills 

Hard skills:

• Hard skills are teachable abilities, with which practicing you can polish. 
• Hard skills are technical knowledge you gain through a career or education. 
• Hard skills are measurable abilities that you can quantify. 
• You should have all the recent technical knowledge, to show you are up to date.

Soft skills:

• Soft skills are personal traits.
• Soft skills are interpersonal knowledge that is taught or injected into you with time. 
• Soft skills can not be termed as a measurable activity but are important quality indicators. 
• Unlike technical skills, soft skills can never be outdated. 
• Soft skills are not restricted to any particular job, every job needs and demands people skills

Importance of hard skills and soft skills on a resume:

Skills always volume up your CV, whether we mention technical skills or soft skills. An employer always looks for something exceptional in their candidate that can be an asset to the company. 

Let us understand the whole concept of the importance of skills through an easy example.

Suppose, you applied for a job position competing with one more candidate, that job position requires a good amount of technical skills but you lack some basic technical knowledge.

And at the same time, the other person has all the knowledge of hard skills but lacks good communication skills or has no team-friendly perspective. 

In such a case an employer will decide upon you instead of the other candidate. As technical skills have a scope of improvement with practice but not interpersonal skills.

Conclusion:

Hard skills and Soft skills are a must mention on resumes.

You can create a proper well-arranged resume with a professional resume-building platform such as cvDragon. That can impress your employers within minutes.

Hope with this article you understood the importance of hard skills and soft skills on a resume and the whole concept of technical skills and interpersonal skills.