If as a student you ever had a session with your guidance counsellor or spent much time learning about the job hunting process, you’ve probably heard a lot about hard skills. And if you are a recruiter or already into the corporate world then hard skills are a parcel of your daily professional life. To be well prepared for the discussion we are getting into let’s have a refresher on what skills set is in a brief perspective. A skill set is the knowledge, abilities, and experience needed to perform a job. Human relations, analysis and planning, accounting, leadership, management, and computer skills are a few descriptions of specific skill sets.
However, what are hard skills and how do they vary from soft skills? What are the most sought-after hard skills by employers?
What Is a Skill Set?
A skill set is a collection of skills, personal characteristics, and capabilities that you’ve acquired over the course of your life and work. It usually includes two forms of skills: soft and hard skills.
Interpersonal or people skills are examples of soft skills. They are difficult to measure and link to a person’s personality and willingness to collaborate with others. Effective communication, listening, attention to detail, analytical thinking, empathy, and dispute solving abilities are among the skills that are in high demand.
Hard skills can be measured and taught. They provide the technical skills and expertise needed for a particular job. Computer programming, accounting, mathematics, and data processing are examples of hard skills.
What are Hard Skills?
On any given day in the office, you are likely to use a variety of skills. Any of these skills are unique to a particular work. Hard skills are a necessary component of a job’s skill set. They provide the knowledge and skills required for a person to complete the job successfully. They are usually described in job postings and job descriptions and are job-specific.
Formal education and training programmes, such as college, apprenticeships, short-term training schools, online courses, and certification programmes, as well as on-the-job training, are used to learn hard skills. You may also use non-job-specific hard skills. You may, for instance, use your written communication skills to prepare an email to follow up on a critical project. You may present a project idea to a manager using your verbal communication skills.
Top Hard Skills Required In The Industry:
Analytical and Aptitude Skills :
Online Aptitude Tests are increasingly becoming popular among recruiters across various industries because they help in assessing a candidate based on their cognitive abilities, problem solving capabilities, logical reasoning and quantitative aptitude.
In today’s world a programmer is expected to be proficient in designing and creating software programs, integrating systems and software, training end-users, analyzing algorithms, modifying source-code, writing system instructions, debugging, and maintaining operating systems. All these things might sound like rocket science but for a good programmer this is as routine as taking a morning coffee.
Data Analysis Skills:
A Data Analyst is a generalist, entrusted with deciphering a mixed range of data to educate the decision-makers with better business choices. They help in overcoming any issues between the technical and non-technical decisions, investing as much time and energy cleaning and investigating data as they do making informative visuals and distinct reports.
This job is instrumental in dissecting the quantitative implications of key business choices. At their core, they assume the role of a specialised technical interpreter, handing-off specialised bits of knowledge in a manner that resounds with the organisation’s non-technical stakeholders.
Consultancy:
A business consultant can be extremely instrumental to the growth of a business. A business consultant is a person who provides the right counsel, guidance, and training their subordinates in their specialised area of expertise. Since most consultants work in specific subject matters, you should characterise your business requirements before hiring a business consultant.
Unfortunately, anybody can consider themselves a business consultant these days. This opens the market to tricksters and unpracticed counselors. Employing a business consultant implies committing to an enormous investment of time and money.
Coding Skills:
Online coding tests are tests sent to possible or potential future employees by an organisation commonly to fill in as a zero or first round of interview to get an initial understanding of the candidate’s coding capabilities. They are frequently given to new graduates or fresh college pass outs, yet any technical candidate can be subjected to an online coding test.
Few of the quality candidates can get their code correct right in the first attempt since troubleshooting, debugging and testing is a significant part of the programming cycle. To evaluate or assess a candidate’s programming skills, you have to give the prospective candidate a credible programming or coding test in which you can test their coding skills.
Technical Writing:
A proficient content writer is a story teller who will act as an evangelist for your product/service/ idea. Writing grammatically correct content is one, but there are a few other key components that candidates need to be assessed on various other skills as well. An adept content writer will be an all rounder in all types of communication, be it spoken, written or even logical deduction.
Importance Of Hard Skills:
In the workplace, both hard and soft skills are critical, and the top skills employers seek will vary depending on the position.
Hard skills can normally be taught in a sequence of concrete steps, whereas soft skills cannot. Teaching someone how to code is a more clearly described task from the viewpoint of a teacher or boss than teaching them how to listen and interact efficiently with a client.
Soft skills can’t be taught by memorisation, and they also require emotional intelligence and empathy, making them more difficult to teach.
In the end, both hard and soft skills are important for job preparation. Once you have these, you’ll be able to do a good job in the real world, where knowing what you’re talking about—and being able to communicate it in a way that others will understand—is critical.