March 18, 2019 5 min read

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Soft skills are the ways in which employees relate to and interact with other people. And they are more valuable to employers than you might think. 

Seventy-seven percent of employers surveyed by CareerBuilder reported they were seeking candidates with soft skills — and 16 percent of the respondents considered such qualities more crucial than hard skills. The Multi-Generational Job Search Study 2014 by Millennial Branding said employers ranked the following as the most highly desired qualities in candidates: communication skills, a positive attitude and the ability to work in a team, all of which can be labeled soft skills or emotional intelligence.

Hard skills, on the other hand, are teachable abilities or skill sets that are easy to quantify, such as a proficiency in a foreign language or computer programming. While hard skills might be developed on the job, employees should come to an organization already in possession of soft skills. When employees lack these basic soft skills, it can hurt the overall success of the organization.  

The soft skills that employers are seeking, according to CareerBuilder, Millennial Branding and others, include the following:

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