Soft skills vs. hard skills – what's the difference?

The good thing about soft skills vs. hard skills is there are no winners or losers! It's best for you and your career to have both. By this, we mean job skills, AKA hard skills, coupled with particular character traits and abilities that are becoming increasingly important in the professional world, especially in daily interaction: soft skills. 

Soft skills and hard skills are like the yin and yang of every applicant profile. These strengths aren't mutually exclusive, but complement each other and make your profile interesting to the job market. 

Soft skills vs. hard skills: what exactly do they mean and what's the difference? It's precisely these questions that we will get to the bottom of in this article.

What are hard skills?

It's pretty easy to explain what hard skills are, because it's simply a neat way of saying "the job skills that you have learned in the course of your education". Your hard skills, i.e. your basic school education, form the basis of your applicant profile, followed by your university degree and any work experience. 

Job skills can usually be evidenced by a reference, certificate or test, and in some cases can also be actively demonstrated. For example, your language skills or technical skills on the computer are an example of hard skills. Hard skills have been given their name because they're hard, i.e. tangible.

What counts as hard skills in your job application?

When distinguishing between soft skills and hard skills, you'll usually find several examples of soft skills. What counts as a hard skill, on the other hand, seems to be clear for the most part. So what are hard skills? Here's an overview so that you know what to put where in your application documents. After all, even the best soft skillsaren't worth much without hard skills.

Examples of hard skills: which are in demand?

Hard skills build on each other and increase with professional experience. Of course, the requirements for hard skills vary from job to job. 

Evidence of hard skills include:

• School diplomas
• Academic degrees: Bachelor's, Master's, etc.
• Work experience, and also internships and student jobs
• Certificates: further education, seminars, trainer certificate, etc.
• Software skills: Office programs, graphics programs, SAP, content management, etc.
• Programming languages
• Foreign languages: Semester abroad, language courses, etc.

Your hard skills will only develop further with time and improved knowledge. So there's no need to worry if you haven't acquired some of the job skills on the list just yet. Your hard skills can be developed gradually – for example, while learning by doing or in specific training. Employers wanting to hire young professionals are aware of this.

Emphasise hard skills in your application documents

In most cases, we recommend including the relevant references or certificates to demonstrate your hard skills in your application. For most employers, the CV is the most important document in an application. Your CV should therefore show which hard skills you already have. These can be shown by including your previous positions.  

Your covering letter is also a good place to specifically address the job skills that are required in the job profile. After all, only applicants who have these skills will ultimately be able to perform the job being advertised! We have provided a link to more information on the subject of CVs below.

What are soft skills?

Soft skills vs. hard skills – it's good to have both hard and soft sides! The majority of employers consider soft skills to be at least as important as hard skills. But what are soft skills as opposed to hard skills? 

Here's a definition: soft skills are your personal abilities, character traits, behaviours, attitudes and characteristics that go beyond concrete job skills that you have learned. They're called "soft" because they're difficult to quantify (unlike hard skills which can be measured and classified).

Examples of frequently required soft skills are:

• Team-working skills
• Strong communication skills
• Critical and conflict-solving skills
• Analytical thinking
• Flexibility
• Creativity
• Empathy
• Organisational ability
• Ability to grasp new concepts quickly
• Independence

For more examples, have a look at our list of soft skills. 

However, please remember that the list is far from exhaustive! A large number of strengths make up you and your personality and, depending on the industry and position, there may be others that qualify you for the job. So, you can see your soft skills as what set you apart from other applicants on the search for your dream job. It's therefore vital to know where your strengths lie so that you can use them to your advantage. A bit of self-reflection may help you to realise that you don't actually have all the skills you need, or that they're not all on the same level. This can only be a good thing – everyone's different after all, and soft skills can always be improved!

Emphasise soft skills in your application documents

One of the differences between soft skills and hard skills is that you can easily prove your hard skills with references, certificates, etc. If you want to emphasise soft skills in your application documents, you need to take a different approach. What we don't recommend is a meaningless list of soft skills in your covering letter for your job application. We advise being more creative here. Including an example of where you've already successfully used your soft skills is ideal. In your CV, you can also emphasise your soft skills through activities you've carried out.

So here's the deal on soft skills vs. hard skills

To recap: to be successful in your job, a good mix of hard and soft skills is best. As a university graduate, you're still right at the start of your professional career and have acquired a good base of hard skills through your studies, which you can then build on in your job. It's a similar case with soft skills, too. 

The difference between soft and hard skills is that personal skills can't be easily proven with a certificate. Whether you're up to the challenge and have found your dream job is usually only determined in practice. And factors such as the working environment or your area of responsibility also play a huge part, of course. But...guess what? You'll grow alongside your tasks and be amazed at the other strengths you have!  

Our conclusion? Soft skills and hard skills = inseparable.