Recently, the Firm has been searching for a Corporate Law Clerk to add to the team (If you know anyone interested in applying, please email with your Resume and Cover Letter). Throughout the recruiting process, a rift between the candidates’ Hard Skills and Soft Skills has been a recurring theme.
While Hard Skills are obviously important and necessary for candidates to perform the duties of the job, Soft Skills are what make you a professional. From maintaining your task list, managing your time, or communicating clearly, Soft Skills may not be glamorous, but they are core aspects of every professional’s work no matter the industry.
Despite Soft Skills being important to the success of an individual in any industry, they aren’t something that are explicitly taught through the Secondary Education or Post Secondary Education process. This results in many young professionals being ill-equipped to actually perform in the day-to-day of their job.
For many experienced professionals, these skills can be taken for granted as something that is intuitive or obvious, as they have built up the soft skills repertoire over the years. This can lead to a divide between underperforming employees who don’t understand what they are doing, or, more accurately, not doing, wrong, and managers/owners who do not recognize that the lack of Soft Skills may be causing the underperformance.
For owners or managers who are recruiting new employees or coaching existing ones, take the time to assess their Soft Skills in addition to their Hard Skills; ask them how they manage their task lists, what systems they have in place to ensure they’re on track to meet deadlines, if the communication in the workplace is clear to them. Even if these issues aren’t present at the moment, take the time for you and your team to revisit them and share ideas on different strategies to use; frequently, the first sign of a performance slip in an employee is their Soft Skills.
Dylan Coffey, Human Resources