Importance of Soft and Hard Skills for Employee Hiring

This essay highlights the importance of both the soft and hard skills that need to be affiliated within the employees for convincing an employer to hire for the respective jobs. The essay will also be discussing which of these skills would be more important for an employee to be possessing for getting hired in the corporate world.

Leadership

Table of Contents
Leadership........................................................................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................2
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Background Information..............................................................................................................3
Thesis...........................................................................................................................................3
Arguments to Support the Thesis................................................................................................3
Argument 1..................................................................................................................................3
Argument 2..................................................................................................................................4
Argument 3..................................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
It is a perplexing situation for every employer while selecting suitable employees where
they are sceptical in deciding which skills of the employees could be most suitable-hard skills or
soft skills. However, here, the trick lies in knowing which skills these employers are looking for.
An employee could have the potential to learn hard skills if they possesses good soft skills. On
the other hand, hard skills in the employee prove their calibre to do the specific job efficiently.
This essay will be highlighting the importance of both the soft and hard skills that need to be
affiliated within the employees for convincing an employer to hire for the respective jobs. The
essay will also be discussing which of these skills would be more important for an employee to
be possessing for getting hired in the corporate world.
MAIN BODY
Background Information
Soft skills are those skills which are classified under personality trait and habit of the
individuals. These soft skills are interpersonal skills and communication skills. Other examples
of these are teamwork, adaptability, conflict resolution, leadership, problems solving, empathy
and work ethic. These skills have been considered as basis of better performance of employees at
their job. This is why these are more important than as hard skills as they can be learned easily
and soft skills need to be moulded in personality and behaviour and this also help employees to
get along and adjust in organisational culture.
Thesis
This essay will discuss importance of soft skills and its importance for employees while being
hired in organisation.
Arguments to Support the Thesis
 Soft skills are equally important for effective performance of hard skills.
 Soft skills along cannot get hired employees.
 In corporate world employees also requires effective hard skills.

Argument 1
Soft skills are important and work as complementary for hard skills for an employee at his
workplace.
As stated by Dixon, Belnap, Albrecht, and Lee (2010) hard skills have been described as
including the technical or administrative procedures that can be quantified and measured. And
soft skills have been defined as interpersonal, human, people or behavioural skills which
contribute in applying technical skills and knowledge in the workplace (Korn & Light, 2011).
This suggests that it is very important to have soft skills so that employee can employ hard skills
properly.
This is the reason that employers in current scenario are looking to hire employees which are
having effective soft skills along with hard skills. Employers can bias on the basis of soft skills
as hard skills as this is difficult to differentiate candidates on the basis of hard skills. In this hard
and soft skills both together have a positive impact on judgement of interviewer (Wilhelm,
2004). Hard skills can be judged on the basis of objective as this is tangible and teachable
domains of knowledge whereas soft skills are intangible and reflect from behaviour of
individual.
But as the companies are getting more technology oriented employers have started giving more
value to hard skills rather than soft skills (Korn & Light, 2011). This because of various aspects
as employees who are trained in technology will be able to complete the work with more
efficiently and provide improved output to employees.
But technology oriented employees in the organisation if are not having team working skills it
will become difficult for organisation to get the adequate result of those hard skills that
employees is possessing.
Argument 2
Soft Skills alone cannot get hired employees.
Soft skills are important but only soft skills cannot get individual hired in an organisation.
This is because long with hard skills soft skills can add value in performance of employee. This

is because they are able to get along with other employees of the organisation and they can also
maintain good relations with customers of the organisation.
Leaders in an organisation definitely need to have both the type of skills this is because
communication and interpersonal skills are important for leaders and technical and hard skills are
important because they are required to guide and direct their members (Chapman & Rowe,
2002). This make it important for leaders to possess both type of skills. Company this is why hire
employees who can become effective leaders in future.
But soft skills are being given more importance. This is because it is easy for organisation to
teach and train individuals in hard skills but it is not easy to teach and train employees in soft
skills (Litecky, Arnett & Prabhakar, 2004). If employees do not have adequate and required soft
skills it will be very difficult for them to adjust in organisational culture. This will impact and
affect their performance at the organisation.
On the other hand soft skills support hard skills, for example administration skills which are hard
skills but they are required to work in team and this is why they need to have soft skills like
communication skills, team working skills and interpersonal skills (Chapman & Rowe, 2002).
This will enable employee to work in team and get more productive results.
Argument 3
It is important that employee possess both hard and soft skills but it is not clear to what
extent hard and soft skills can define best performance of the employees.
Soft and hard skills are important and this has been proved by research in which 85% of job
success depends on soft skills and 25% job success depends on technical knowledge and hard
skills.
In this, soft skills are important because hard skills can be outsourced as well. But it is not
possible that soft skills are outsourced (Loman, 2011). Soft skills are important that this will
directly affect the performance and behaviour of employees in the organisation.
With effective soft skills individual can perform well in organisation and they can also learn
required hard skills. Team working skills can enable employee to learn from fellow employees

and in case they are not able to work in team instead of being experts in particular hard skills
(Robles, 2012). They will not be able to learn anything new and improve their existing skills.
CONCLUSION
On the basis of above discussion it can be concluded that soft skill and hard skills both
are important for individual while they are in the process of hiring in the organisation. Soft skills
are important as they help individual to adjust in organisational culture. But at the same time
hard skills are also important so that employee can work easily and perform effectively. This also
included support of soft skills to hard skills.
Here it is recommended that further research can be carried out in the field of required
skills in particular job and designation. This is because organisations have various job profiles
and skills required for each of them are different and research can be made in the area of
requirement of hard and soft skills in different types of jobs.
This will help organisations to make better decisions while hiring employees and which job
designations will require and perform better with a particular skill set.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Chapman, D. P., & Rowe, P. M. (2002). The influence of Video conference technology and
interview structure on the recruiting function of the employment interview: A field
experiment. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 10, 185–
197. doi:10.1111/1468-2389.00208
Korn, M., & Light, J. (2011). Business education: On the lesson plan: Feelings—‘soft
skills’ business courses aim to prepare students for managerial roles. Wall Street
Journal, B , 6
Litecky, C. R., Arnett, K. P., & Prabhakar, B. (2004). The paradox of soft versus hard skills in IT
hiring decisions.The Journal of Computer Information Systems, 45(1), 69–
76
Loman, C. (2011). Soft skills courses gain importance in MBA programs. Rochester
Business Journal, 26(46), 26
Robles, M. M. (2012). Executive perceptions of the top 10 soft skills needed in
today’s w o r k p l a c e . Business Communication Quarterly, 75(4),
453–465. doi:10.1177/1080569912460400
Wilhelm, W. J. (2004). Determinants of moral reasoning: Academic factors, gender, richness of
life experiences, and religious preferences. Delta Pi Epsilon Journal, 46,105–121