What Are Soft Skills? Definition & Examples

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With the rise of artificial intelligence and automation in all industries, soft skills are becoming an invaluable tool, maintaining a human-centered approach in the workplace. As a job seeker, soft skills enhance what you bring to the table, setting you apart from the competition. 

If you want to learn how to leverage your soft skills to impress potential employers and land your dream job, this comprehensive guide will provide you with the knowledge and tools you need to succeed. From practical examples to professional advice on crafting a standout resume, you’ll find everything you need to give yourself a competitive edge in today’s job market.

We’ll cover the following topics: 

• What are soft skills and why they matter
• Top soft skills examples for any industry
• Soft skills for a remote job
• Soft skills for a resume and cover letter
• How to develop soft skills to improve your career 
• How to work on soft skills for your personal brand

What are soft skills?

Including soft skills on a resume can help employers get a better sense of your overall abilities and potential and can help set you apart from other candidates with similar technical skills and qualifications. Overall, having strong soft skills can greatly enhance your career prospects and make you a valuable asset to any organization.

Why are soft skills important?

When employers look at your resume, they’re looking for certain qualities and personality traits that assure them that you will thrive in their workplace. Soft skills show them that you will get along with your coworkers, managers, customers, anyone you interact with. This will also show the employer that you can do your job.

The scope of these skills goes beyond your interactions. Here are some additional benefits of soft skills:

• Soft skills are transferable: You can use your soft skills across any industry, unlike hard skills, which have a limited scope. For example, the customer service skills from your days as a server can help you perform during client meetings as an architect. 
• Soft skills can improve your performance: Your technical skills can be on an expert level, but soft skills, like adaptability and innovation, can take your work to the next level. 
• Soft skills increase your productivity: Soft skills can help you be a better worker — and coworker! Knowing how to collaborate, follow instructions and resolve conflicts can make a difference in your work environment. 
• Soft skills will prepare you for the future of the workplace: A.I. technology, like machine learning, natural language processing, robotics and more, will continue to take over the workplace. In a work environment where machines know how to perform jobs, your humanly soft skills, like emotional intelligence and conceptual thinking, will help you stand out.

Top soft skills examples

According to the Society for Human Resource Management, these are the most in-demand soft skills. We have also included a related soft skills list for each of them so you can tailor them to the job you’re applying for and include them in your resume and cover letter.

To see hard and soft skills in action, explore our library of resume examples with over 1,000 examples for different jobs and industries. We also have resume templates you can use as a base to write yours.

1 Dependability

Employers want to know that they can trust you to finish the job on time. They can’t always have eyes on you, so knowing that they can ask you to do something and that you’ll do it makes dependability a crucial soft skill in any job.

Being dependable means that you have built trust with your manager or team members, that you hold yourself accountable and that the people around you can rely on you. What are soft skills examples for dependability? Here are some other ways to show you can be trusted:

2 Teamwork

Great candidates can lead, but they can also fall in line, take direction and support their teammates when they need to – even if you’re working remotely. This can be a tricky soft skill to prove on a resume, but you'll stand out if you can use your past accomplishments to highlight how you’ve worked alongside others and successfully finished projects together.

Here are some soft skills related to teamwork you can consider for your resume:

3 Problem-solving

The ability to solve problems quickly, effectively and creatively is a soft skill many employers highly value. You might have shown problem-solving skills when you had to use your industry knowledge to find a quick solution to an issue or when you were tasked with something that required research to solve a problem.

Related problem-solving soft skills include:

4 Flexibility

Do you handle stress well? Can you easily pivot from one task to another? Flexibility is a great soft skill to have under your belt, as it shows you can adapt to sudden changes without getting too overwhelmed. A great way to include this soft skill in your job application is by providing an example of when you handled a sudden change of plans.

Here are some related flexibility soft skills examples to consider:

5 Critical thinking

Not many people can analyze a situation, identify the issue and make an informed decision, making this soft skill highly sought after by employers. Whether you’re writing an information technology resume or a food service resume, hiring managers want to know that you can understand a problem, think critically and come up with a solution.

Take a look at these related critical thinking soft skills:

6 Communication

Effective communication is a key component of any job. For many recruiters and hiring managers, communication remains the most critical soft skill for a resume and with good reason – it’s how we share ideas, connect and learn from each other. This soft skill goes beyond speaking clearly. It’s also about listening to others, being empathetic and understanding nonverbal cues.

Here are a few related communication soft skills include:

7 Creativity

Being a creative thinker goes beyond having an imagination. This valuable soft skill is an excellent tool for thinking of different strategies to solve problems, developing new ideas and even paving the way to develop technical and hard skills that fall under the creative arts (like copywriting or painting). A creative person looks at things from a different perspective – which might just be what an employer needs.

Here are some related creativity soft skills examples to consider:

8 Cultural intelligence

A global market makes the world smaller. It is more important than ever to know how to connect with companies in diverse background. Beyond knowing how to speak a language, cultural intelligence, or CQ, allows job seekers to connect with others,  whether client or colleague the other side of the world. 

These are examples of cultural intelligence soft skills:

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Soft skills vs hard skills

The general rule of thumb is to feature six to eight hard and soft skills in a resume but what’s the difference between them? Here’s a quick guide:

Hard skills for resume

Soft skills for resume

Video: Hard Skills and Soft Skills

How to develop soft skills

You can develop soft skills through diverse channels. Don’t limit yourself to just one approach. Variety will help you find out the best way to learn and improve. Taking this step will positively impact your career. 

• Work on your habits: Soft skills can start as habits you’ve nurtured throughout your life, not just your career. Improving them can help you make better choices in your job. For example, improving your morning routine can help you create a better list of tasks and priorities for the day; working on your manners can improve rapport with your colleagues. Practice your new and improved habits every day. 

• Self-evaluate your performance: Write down the soft skills that you need to work on. Create a plan with a timeframe to improve them. Not sure how to self-evaluate? You can research online for a self-assessment tool to help. 

• Ask for feedback: Your coworkers will know other soft skills you must learn. Ask them where they see potential for improvement and examples of how you haven’t done as well in the past. Use this information to create a plan for improvement. 

• Reach out to a mentor: If you have a mentor in the workplace or from your studies, ask their opinions on your work, if you’ve met expectations, where they see room for improvement, and how to achieve it. No mentor? You can contact a membership organization from your industry, a previous manager, or ask if your workplace offers a mentorship program.

• Use traditional learning resources: Whether through your employer or on your own, seek learning resources to build your weakest soft skills and improve your strongest soft skills. A few examples of resources to use are courses through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) and higher learning extension schools, training and workshops. Another tool on the rise in soft skills learning is gamification, which is the approach Duolingo uses to help its user learn a new language.

Be flexible and consistent in learning soft skills. Unlike the traditional education and experience approach to hard skills, learning soft skills is not as clear-cut. Here are a few ways you can evaluate your improvement:

• Self-evaluate your progress after a reasonable amount of time; think three months or six months. 
• Reconvene with a mentor to discuss your previous plans, the results, and the next steps to continue improving.
• Request feedback from managers and colleagues every so often to determine if your effort is working as intended.  

How to include soft skills in a resume

The soft skills resume placement depends on your resume format. The chronological and combination formats feature the traditional bulleted list for a skills section but the functional format — also known as the skills-based resume — divides your skills into different sections, such as “Summary of Qualifications” and “Professional Skills.”

The correct format for you will depend on your years of experience. 

• Use the chronological format if you’re an experienced professional.
• Go for the combination format if you’re a midlevel candidate.
• Consider the functional format if you don’t have a lot of work experience or have employment gaps.

Here’s an example of a hard an soft skills list for an accountant resume:

Here’s an example of professional skills and skills list together:

Another way to highlight your soft skills is by including them in your work experience section and providing examples of how you used them to achieve a goal.

For example, here you would showcase your collaboration and leadership skills. 

• Team leader for an eight-person group in a social media marketing campaign with a conversion rate of 12%.

In this example, your creativity and project management are highlighted. 

• Granted artistic freedom as a window display designer, increasing store foot traffic by 28%. 

Here, an employer will see your relationship-building, persuasion and networking. 

• Built relationships with local businesses to facilitate event organization for holiday sales. 

How to include soft skills in a cover letter

Writing a cover letter is a great way to expand your hard and soft skills. A cover letter is a blank canvas where you can further explain your qualifications and why you’re a good fit for the job. It’s meant to complement the information on your resume, so you can choose one or two soft skills that you think are important to the employer and talk more about them.

Your soft skills in your cover letter might look like this accountant cover letter example:

Not sure how to get started with your cover letter? Use our Cover Letter Builder! We do the heavy lifting for you by guiding you step-by-step through your cover letter writing. Just select a cover letter template to get started.

Soft skills in virtual and remote work

Technology advances have brought flexibility to the workplace, allowing employees to work from anywhere and at any time. Yet, to be a successful remote employee, you must use your soft skills. 

These are a few of the soft skills you need to show as a successful remote worker.

• Excellent communication — Whether a quick email or Zoom meeting that doesn’t that much of your colleagues' time, you must possess excellent communication. Keep it clear and concise. Remember, 
• Time management — You must keep up with your productivity and deadlines
• Adaptability — At the office, you might be able to tell change is coming, but it’s a little tricky to do it remotely. 
• Collaboration — As a remote worker, it can be easy to lose track of time and focus only on the tasks at hand. But, you’re still part of a team that needs your voice. Work with your team by being responsive, flexible and a proactive member. This will help everyone work better together.

It’s a good idea to reassess your remote soft skills by seeking feedback from your coworkers and managers. It’ll help you become a better remote worker and allow you to update your resume with newer examples of how you’ve successfully used your soft skills in the workplace. 

Integrating soft skills into personal branding

Ever heard of personality hires? It’s one of the latest trends in the job market: candidates whose soft skills are so strong, employers see them as an invaluable asset. Their personal branding is all about highlighting their soft skills, like persuasiveness, collaboration and team building.  

Whether or not you’re also a personality hire, you can take advantage of their strategies to incorporate soft skills into your personal branding. For example: 

• Network strategically — You have to hit the pavement and build relationships in your industry through events, memberships and projects. Networking will show more than your communication skills, it’ll demonstrate your ability to nurture relationships. 
• Capitalize your social media — Use a profile, like your Bold.pr networking profile, to  leverage your writing skills, highlight your extensive network and share achievements. These tasks not only highlight your soft skills, it also presents them to potential employers. 
• Use a resume headline — Include soft skills in your resume headline to make them part of your personal branding tagline. For example, Compassionate CNA with 3+ years of experience or Creative Special Education Teacher with Passion for Inclusion. 

Key takeaways