What are soft skills?

What exactly is soft skill? What is the proportion in different stages of career development? According to our interview summary for many years, it is found that the greater the influence of a position in the organization or the higher the level of the position, the higher the requirement for soft skills.

Traditionally, accounting should be conservative rather than radical. However, with the advent of the era of capital economy, more and more enterprises are more inclined to business innovation and have a business sense of capital operation, so the color of accounting posts is associated with conservatism and innovation.

What's the difference between soft skills and hard skills?

Hard skills usually have three characteristics: visible, measurable and objectively comparable. According to years of work experience, we found that hard skills mainly focus on professional knowledge and professional skills. In terms of professional knowledge, academic qualifications and professional certification are usually a reflection and confirmation of our professional knowledge. For example, when some customers choose the chief financial officer, they always hope that the other party has an intermediate or above accounting title and a graduate degree. In addition to professional knowledge, enterprises generally pay more attention to professional skills, that is, hands-on ability and practical experience. In the financial position, it is usually required to be proficient in operating relevant financial software, and data analysts generally require to be proficient in operating SAS or SPSS data analysis software, which are hard skills.

Soft skills, on the other hand, are intangible, perceptual and uncertain. They are mainly based on the interviewer's subjective comprehensive judgment on the applicant's past work experience and success stories. For example, a person's communication ability, expression ability, interpersonal relationship, teamwork ability, and some potential and ability that can be developed. Take the CFO as an example. A competent CFO must have strong leadership and coordination ability, comprehensive analysis ability, calm mind and teamwork spirit in order to fully operate the enterprise financial, investment and financing system. At the same time, the chief financial officer should have good professional ethics and do a good job in internal audit and verification, especially after the Enron and WorldCom incidents, employers around the world tend to be more strict with this soft requirement.

Practice shows that the weight of hard skills and soft skills in job hunting varies with the position and company background. Generally speaking, for mature multinational companies, different levels of job recruitment pay different attention to candidates' soft and hard skills. This contrast is particularly evident in the last round of interviews. Generally speaking, from the perspective of supervisors, managers, senior managers, directors and vice presidents, the proportion of soft skills is on the rise, accounting for 40%, 50% and 60% respectively, and the soft skills of vice presidents tend to be nearly 80% in interviews.

We can see that the more we go to senior positions, the more obvious the proportion of soft skills will be. Maybe the candidate will be confused about this. Isn't the more "material" the more valuable it is? In fact, the ratio mentioned here must be based on meeting the basic hardware requirements put forward by the recruitment enterprise, and this ratio is also a comparison between candidates with roughly the same ability.

Generally speaking, promotion is gradual. A director-level candidate who applies for the position of director is often rejected at the initial screening, so it is impossible to show soft skills in the interview. Candidates for management positions are usually under very difficult conditions, but usually the value of management lies not only in the display of individual ability, but also in the ability to lead a team to fight. Teams are made up of people, and soft skills are aimed at people's communication, coordination and leadership skills. This is why soft skills are so valued in senior job recruitment.

Reminding candidates to pay attention to the cultivation of soft skills does not mean giving up hard skills. Always remember that hardware is the foundation, even if it only accounts for 1%, it is still the initial threshold for recruitment. Soft skills can only be enlarged on the basis that hard conditions meet the requirements. Therefore, in career development, it is necessary to balance the relationship between the two to meet the needs of different stages of career.