You need human skills to keep a job and you need them to advance
your career. They are, for example, essential when you manage,
collaborate, compromise, work with critical people, deal with a
difficult customer or endure a challenging boss.
Indeed "top ten" lists of the job skills demanded by employers always include a healthy dose of human skills. So it is natural to consider highlighting these skills when writing a resume.
But there are two reasons why this strategy, when used alone, will not work.
In an era with increasing emphasis on information technology and modern management skills - like project management - human skills are unlikely to produce a job offer. The reason is simple. It is very hard for any recruiter to validate them. How can a recruiter, for example, validate that you "work well in teams" or that you are an excellent "communicator." There may, in fact, be truth to both of these assertions, but few recruiters will take these "soft" skills at face value. Indeed, they would need the kind of proof that is very difficult to obtain.
For this and many other reasons you may be in a better position if your resume also includes "hard" skills like spreadsheet modeling, database analysis, or project management. Recruiters know that during the second or third stage of the interview process these skills can be verified.
Now for the second reason. Most large organizations cannot possibly read every cover letter and resume sent in response to an add on LinkedIn or Monster. It would simply take too much time. Instead, they resort to scanning. And what do they scan? At a minimum they will scan your experience and the skills you bring to the job. But, in most cases the skills that will get through their screen will not be the human or soft skills. Instead they will be the computer based or management skills that reflect real expertise.
So what do you do if you don't have these hard skills? How can you improve your chances of getting through the screen? The answer is that you develop hard skills. Or if you already have hard skills, you develop more of them. But which skills should be learned and how much time will it take. Recent evidence suggests that, using modern learning methods, you should be able to learn a new skill in about 20 hours. Not that this will be enough to be considered an expert, but it will be enough to engage other professionals in an intelligent conversation about the way in which these tools can be used to support the goals of the organization.
Indeed "top ten" lists of the job skills demanded by employers always include a healthy dose of human skills. So it is natural to consider highlighting these skills when writing a resume.
But there are two reasons why this strategy, when used alone, will not work.
In an era with increasing emphasis on information technology and modern management skills - like project management - human skills are unlikely to produce a job offer. The reason is simple. It is very hard for any recruiter to validate them. How can a recruiter, for example, validate that you "work well in teams" or that you are an excellent "communicator." There may, in fact, be truth to both of these assertions, but few recruiters will take these "soft" skills at face value. Indeed, they would need the kind of proof that is very difficult to obtain.
For this and many other reasons you may be in a better position if your resume also includes "hard" skills like spreadsheet modeling, database analysis, or project management. Recruiters know that during the second or third stage of the interview process these skills can be verified.
Now for the second reason. Most large organizations cannot possibly read every cover letter and resume sent in response to an add on LinkedIn or Monster. It would simply take too much time. Instead, they resort to scanning. And what do they scan? At a minimum they will scan your experience and the skills you bring to the job. But, in most cases the skills that will get through their screen will not be the human or soft skills. Instead they will be the computer based or management skills that reflect real expertise.
So what do you do if you don't have these hard skills? How can you improve your chances of getting through the screen? The answer is that you develop hard skills. Or if you already have hard skills, you develop more of them. But which skills should be learned and how much time will it take. Recent evidence suggests that, using modern learning methods, you should be able to learn a new skill in about 20 hours. Not that this will be enough to be considered an expert, but it will be enough to engage other professionals in an intelligent conversation about the way in which these tools can be used to support the goals of the organization.
For more information on a program that integrates skill building,
resume writing and job search into one comprehensive package check out Job Launch Accelerator
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Barry_Shore,_Ph.D
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