Your Skills Development: Hard and Soft Skills

In developing your skills, I’d like you to consider 2 groups of skills:

• Hard skills: Skills relating to any specific task; they are usually easily quantifiable. They tend to be knowledge-based, such as proficiency in a subject, certification, and technical skills. Fluency in Spanish, skills in XYZ software, graphic design, and programming are all hard skills.
• Soft skills: Skills relating to personality and tend to be transferable, such as communication, leadership, time management, stress management, decision making, adaptability, ability to deal with adversity, and networking.

It’s obvious why hard skills are important. You need domain-level knowledge to thrive in a goal. To be a successful YouTuber, you should at least have some video editing skills. To be a good blogger, you should have good writing skills and a good command of the language. To be a good software engineer, you need to know programming.

But many people miss out on soft skills. For example, a writer may insist he is great at writing but get 0 book sales. Assuming his writing skills are top-notch, perhaps he lacks certain soft skills necessary for success, like networking, pitching, and self-marketing. After all, writing a successful book isn’t just about having good writing skills:

• You need to pitch to publishers/collaborators.
• You need to market yourself to people.
• You need insightfulness that helps you understand what people want and how to write stories that resonate with people.

That’s not to say you focus on soft skills over knowledge. Both hard and soft skills are important. When you succeed based on only soft skills but with no hard skills, you lack the foundation to create new wins. It’s a matter of time before people call you out on your bullshit. When you have only hard but no soft skills, you lack the saviness  to hustle and showcase your talent to a bigger crowd out there. Both skills are equally important and complementary to each other.