In Today’s world where the Corporate Sector is more powerful than ever, we need to understand business communication from the basics, which is best imbibed if the fundamentals are clear. In an Era where there is a cut throat Competition in the market our Youth Cannot afford to remain otherwise and complacent. According to our findings most of the students in Nagaland and the Educated youth are very passive and laidback in their approach. It could possibly be because of Plain ignorance, lack of self-knowledge and confidence, lack of proper guidance, training and exposure etc. Therefore the need of the hour is to”empower Human Resource” by honing the soft skills part of an individual.
How are soft skills defined? This basic question is not easy to answer, because the perception of what is a soft skill differs from context to context. A subject may be considered a soft skill in one particular area, and may be considered a hard skill in another. Just so we can understand better, soft skills are defined as the mix of skills, attitudes, behaviors, personal qualities and mindsets that individuals use to be successful across different situations in work and life. There is a growing awareness that, combined with technical and academic achievement, soft skills are critical to young people’s success in the workplace and their development in all domains of life. But soft skills are poorly understood, not well assessed, and all too often overlooked in policy and institutional contexts, including education, training and the workplace. By highlighting the importance of soft skills and seeking to more deeply understand them, we can help ensure that all young people acquire these skills for employment and life success. Despite a proliferation of terms and frameworks for describing these skills, there is a remarkable consensus around the types of skills youth need and the broad parameters regarding how to develop them.
Why are soft skills important? After having elaborated so much on soft skills, the answer to why they are considered as being so important is still open. There are numerous reasons for having a critical look at a person’s soft skills. One straightforward reason is today’s job-market, which in many fields is becoming ever increasingly competitive. To be successful in this tough environment, candidates for jobs have to bring along a “competitive edge” that distinguishes them from other candidates with similar qualifications and comparable evaluation results. Understandably, employers prefer to take in job candidates who will be productive from a very early stage on. If a graduate from university first has to be trained on putting more than three sentences together, how to do a proper presentation, or how to chat in a pleasant and winning manner with colleagues and customers, this graduate will not qualify as a quick starter.. Already during the job interview itself good communication skills are invaluable. They can even serve to successfully cover up weaknesses on the hard skills side.The advantages of displaying positive traits like courtesy, honesty, flexibility, common sense, flawless appearance, etc.. It unfortunately happens very seldom that a job candidate who was rejected because of inadequate soft skills is told the truth about the reason for rejection, e.g. “Your body language showed that you seemed to feel very insecure, and you had problems to express yourself and present yourself in a convincing manner”. Even so this evaluation may sound harsh at first glance; this kind of feedback would help a job seeker a lot in improving his/her style for oncoming interviews.As mentioned before, good communication skills can easily be used to cover up a lack in hard skills. Nowadays in general, people who are extroverted, who are good in marketing themselves, and who socialize easily are rated superior to others who lack those attributes. The good old technician, an ace in his field, but being introverted and talking less than ten complete sentences a day is not appreciated any longer.
During the last decades in many societies the opinion on soft skills has changed considerably. Whereas in the past the mastering of hard skills was rated first and soft skills were considered as “nice to have”, the perception has been turned upside down. In contemporary business, candidate with soft skills qualities are more sought in both private and Government jobs.
