Hard Skills Vs. Soft Skills

Introduction

One million dollar question, which project and human resource management have asked for several years while doing recruitment, is whether do recruit individual endowed with hard skills or soft skills. This leads to asking the quest that between the two is the most important for an organization. Hard skills can be defined as technical know how or specific abilities that relate to the core business that an organization does to networking, machine operations among others. Soft skills, on the other hand, are subjective and undefined (Peggy, 2007).

  It mostly deals with issues like communication, problem-solving, and conflict resolution among others. However, everybody agrees that both skills are necessary for the success of an organization, which between the two is most crucial?

The crucial character of a manager is the ability to be flexible, a manager who can understand organization process, tools and techniques being utilized within the organization. Managers should be able to adapt to all types of organization and project process and have technical know-how on running team operation.

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This characteristic emphasizes on the soft skills and portrays technical skills as added advantage (Peggy, 2007)

Managers spent most of their time almost 90% communicating, solving problems, negotiating planning among others. These are mostly soft skills that are being put to use. One can, therefore, argue that although both skills are essential, soft skills are being required in a higher percentage to help in coordinating hard skills for an organization success.

Peggy (2007) states that whenever one wants to stay competitive and ahead of the game, one need to keep his or her hard skills sharp.

However, for one to succeed faster, he needs to keep his soft skills updated. Therefore, in conclusion, soft skills always precede hard skills for an average person and training institution should ensure more soft skills in their employees.

Motivation is one of the key elements for the performance of organization employees, as individuals who are highly motivated performs more than individuals who are not highly motivated. The motivation factors come from soft skills which when combined with hard skills then individuals can be in a position to achieve or reach self actualization. All employers needs employees who could deliver assignments in time and factor of time management plays very important aspect of project success. It also brings the idea of planning within organization which is an aspect of soft skills. Therefore we can conclude that even if one possess greater aspect of hard skills, without elements of soft skills the project can not be successful and always hard skills plays second place to soft skills.

Good leadership calls for effective communication and without effective communication, project cannot pick off and starts operating smoothly, most researchers have argued that one with soft skills can assembly individuals with technical know-how and operates organization smoothly while individuals with only technical know-how could not manage an organization. This supports the arguments that human beings in terms of labour are the most valuable asset of an organization and if well managed then the organization will realize success. Hence soft skills are superior to hard skills.

Reference

Peggy K. (2007) THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT SOFT SKILLS: WORKPLACE LESSONS SMART PEOPLE WISH THEY'D LEARNED SOONER by.  Klaus & Associates, Inc.