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I

The term “core competency” is believed to have been introduced in 1990 by the HarvardBusiness Review to describe a specialized expertise that can be leveraged as a competitive

advantage. Since then, the concept has been lent to a wide range of applications for defining key

strengths and essential qualifications for performance. This article provides a brief overview of competency-based hiring and how

nonprofits can best use this technique in the hiring process.

What is Competency-Based H ir ing?  

An individual’s core competencies are generally grouped along two dimensions: (1) skills,

knowledge and technical qualifications, and (2) behavioral characteristics, personality attributes

and individual aptitudes. Traditional hiring practices have focused on systematically evaluating a

candidate’s fit with the first type of qualifications, while relegating insights related to the secondtype to “color commentary” and “gut instincts.” A competency-based approach, however,

includes a framework for analyzing a candidate’s behavioral attributes as well as their technicalexperience. This method has dominated the literature over the past ten years as the recognized

 preferred approach to hiring. The process starts by identifying a full range of competenciesrequired for success in a position and then evaluating each candidate’s demonstration of those

traits.

When considering the core competencies that might be required for success in a role, it is

important to distinguish between position-specific and organizational competencies. Position-

specific elients may include attributes of an individual’s work style as well as personal qualitieslike being analytical, resourceful, flexible, or creative. Organizational competencies refer to the

qualities and attributes that characterize success across an entire organization. These include fit

with the organization’s management style, risk tolerance, work pace and volume, employeedemographics, and physical environment. Organizational competencies play a major role indetermining what type of people will “fit” in an organization, regardless of their specific role.

For example, a rigid and authoritarian manager is not likely to succeed in a highly

entrepreneurial and collaborative nonprofit culture.

The following chart provides some further examples of position-specific and organizationalcompetencies.

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Competencies in Action  

The first step in adopting a competency-based hiring model is to determine your organizational

and position-specific competencies. To figure out organizational competencies, we recommend

convening a focus group or implienting a survey to identify the top four or five characteristics

and traits that typically make someone successful within the organization. Be sure to include allkey stakeholders as appropriate, possibly including staff from all levels as well as board

members, funders and other constituents. In order to determine position-specific competencies,

you will want to employ a similar process, focusing on those who know the position best.

Depending on your organization, it may also be helpful to define department-specificcompetencies for highly specialized departments such as finance or development.

After you have determined the competencies for a given position, use this information to inform

all subsequent stages of your recruitment and hiring processes. For example, your job description

should focus on the core competencies that successful candidates will demonstrate. In terms of 

recruitment, a focus on core competencies will lead to a broader candidate pool because you will be seeking professionals who possess the desired traits but who may come from a variety of non-

traditional backgrounds.

Using core competencies to drive the screening and interviewing phases of the hiring process

will provide valuable information on which to base hiring decisions. We recommend using behavioral interviewing, which refers to asking questions that require candidates to describe pastexperiences in which they were able to demonstrate specific competencies. Based on the premise

that “past behavior predicts future behavior,” behavioral interviewing has proven to be one of the

most effective means of determining how each candidate has performed in certain types of situations and therefore how successful each may be in a certain role.

The Softer Side of Skil ls 

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In the nonprofit sector, so-called “soft skills,” or personality-based competencies, play a big role

in hiring decisions and management strategies. Knowing the soft skills that are most important to

your organization allows you to consider candidates based directly on their personal qualities andabilities. Although desired soft skills vary between organizations, many nonprofits value:

• Being an entrepreneurial self -starter / self-manager 

• Working effectively in a collaborative environment• Being resourceful and creative in approaching projects • Having a positive attitude and a sense of humor  

To evaluate the presence of these or other transferable soft skills in potential hires, it may be

helpful to follow two rules of thumb: stay open-minded and do your homework. Begin by

thinking broadly about a candidate’s past experience in work, school, and civic life. Research the

companies listed on candidates’ resumes to understand their past work environments. Manydesirable soft skills are developed when working in start-up, fast-growing or highly creative

work environments. When speaking with candidates, ask for specific examples of times they

were called on to use a certain soft skill.

In addition to evaluating a candidate’s transferable soft skills, probe on personal qualities that

demonstrate a mission-fit with your organization. Not all candidates are going to come to youwith extensive work or volunteer experience in your specific field, but that does not mean they

do not possess the personal qualities required to connect with and embrace your organization’s

mission. Share as much information as you can (including brochures, videos, or other collateral)

with strong candidates in order to give them a sense of the importance of your organization’smission and culture.

Transferable Hard Skil ls  

Many career counselors advise nonprofit jobseekers, especially sector switchers and recentgraduates, to identify and market their “transferable skills.” But how open-minded are nonprofitswhen it comes to looking at candidates who offer skills and experiences gained in other sectors

or environments? Organizations that consider themselves entrepreneurial are generally more

open to hiring talent from other sectors or nontraditional backgrounds. For many organizations,candidates with transferable skills are welcome in some job functions, such as operations,

management, and finance, but not in others, such as fundraising and program management.

It’s common for nonprofit hiring managers to have a very specific picture of the hard skills

required for a given role. A grant writer needs to have written grants before. Someone working in

community affairs must have experience with the community being served. But what candidatesmight you be missing out on by not considering candidates with demonstrated success from

different work environments? Some often overlooked skills that can be successfully transferred

to nonprofit roles are:

Sales and Marketing: Skills learned and honed in these fields of the private sector can be easily

transferred to the field of nonprofit development and fundraising. These candidates may be ableto exhibit hard skills in building high-touch relationships, producing collateral, giving

 presentations and making pitches. People with sales experience, particularly those with a

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 background in identifying prospects and cultivating relationships, can often make a smooth

transition into fundraising with some basic support and guidance.

Writing and Research: Individuals with experience in journalism, corporate communications, and

other fields that require strong analytical and writing skills can often leverage their transferable

skills into other types of development and fundraising roles. Additionally, recent graduates frommaster of public administration (MPA) or master of public health (MPH) programs typically

 possess the research and writing experience needed to break into development.

Consulting: Management consulting experience is sought after in the nonprofit sector because of 

the analytical, research, project management, and client management skills that people with this

kind of experience bring. Consulting experience transfers extremely well to roles in which professional services are provided to other nonprofit clients. Corporate partnerships, community

outreach, and board relations are other roles in which consulting experience can be valuable. One

challenge of transitioning from a management consulting (or other corporate) background to a

nonprofit role is the shift from working for an internal client to an external one. For example,

some management consultants work in the trenches of customer research but do not interact withclients face-to-face. When considering these candidates, probe their knowledge of and

experience in client-focused environments and be prepared to connect these hires with mentorsor other internal staff to support their transition.

Information Technology (IT): Thinking creatively about IT staff can yield great results for nonprofits. Administrative or operational professionals who have been responsible for 

technology and systems management in past jobs can easily transfer these skills to a nonprofit

environment. Similarly, technology professionals who have been specialists in a large

department or corporation, but who are seeking more autonomy and ownership of their work,also transfer well to the nonprofit sector. In addition to technology skills, look for customer 

service, teamwork, communication and soft skills.

Conclusion  

Adopting a competency-based hiring model requires an investment of time and effort up front,

 but that investment is well worth the effort when you are making more appropriate and

sophisticated hiring decisions. After the hire is made, core competencies continue to be useful insetting goals and positioning new hires for success, identifying areas for professional

development, and making appropriate decisions about future promotions and raises.

Additionally, a candidate’s past success using a specific set of skills and competencies is the bestindicator of how he or she will perform in a new role. Whether a hire is new to a job function or 

to the sector, remember that this person’s ability to call upon his or her soft and hard skills in a

new role is what most ensures success. By considering candidates with a variety of transferableskills, you will diversify your staff and increase the impact of your organization.

For more information on competency-based hiring, we suggest the following helpful resources:

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Hiring and Keeping the Best People (Harvard Business School Press) 

How to Compete in the War for Talent (Hacker) 

The Talent Edge (Cohen) 

The War for Talent (Axelrod, Michaels) 

This article was written by Commongood Careers and is published under a Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

For more information about nonprofit and socially entrepreneurial careers, visit CommongoodCareers at http://www.cgcareers.org. 

ard Skills vs. Soft Skills –  What’s the difference and is one more important than the other to your career success? In my recent articles –  What are Soft Skills and List of 28 Soft Skills, I offered

detailed definitions of soft skills. Here I want to highlight three key differences between hard

skills and soft skills and how their importance depends highly on the career you are in.

Three Key Differences between Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills  

  To be good at hard skills usually takes smarts or IQ (also known as your left brain-the logical

center). To be good at soft skills usually takes Emotonal Intelligence or EQ (also known as your

right brain- the emotional center). Examples of hard skills include math, physics, accounting,

programming, finance, biology, chemistry, statistics, etc… For a list of 28 soft skills, click here. 

  Hard skills are skills where the rules stay the same regardless of which company, circumstance

or people you work with. In contrast, soft skills are self management skills and people skills

where the rules changes depending on the company culture and people you work with. For

example, programming is a hard skill. The rules for how you can be good at creating the best

code to do a function is the same regardless of where you work. Communication skills are a set

of soft skills. The rules for how to be effective at communication changes and depend on your

audience or the content you are communicating. You may communicate well to

fellow programmers about technical details while struggle significant to communicate clearly to

senior manager about your project progress and support needed.

  Hard skills can be learned in school and from books. There are usually designated level of 

competency and a direct path as to how to excel with each hard skill. For example, accounting

is a hard skill. You can take basic accounting and then advanced accounting courses. You can

then work to get experience and then take an exam and be certified as a CPA, etc.. In contrast,

there is no simple path to learn soft skills. Most soft skills are not taught well in school and

have to be learned on the job by trial and error. There are many books and guides on soft

skills. I also recently wrote an article on How to Improve Your Soft Skills as a starting point.

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They help to an extent. Unless you can apply the tips you learn and be adaptable, there aren’t

any easy step-by-step instructions on how to master a soft skill.

Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills – Which is more important?

It depends highly on the career you choose. Here is why.

  Careers can be put into 3 kind of categories. It is up to you to figure out which category your

career is in.

1) Careers that need hard skills and little soft skills (example: Physicists); This is where you see

brilliant people who cannot deal well with people. They can still be very successful in their

career – look at Albert Einstein 

2) Careers that need both hard and soft skills – many careers are in this category (example:

Accountants, Lawyers – they need to know the rules of accounting or law well but they also

depend on selling to clients to build a successful career. Dealing well with clients require

excellent soft skills like communication skills, relationship skills etc…) 

3) Careers that need mostly soft skills and little hard skills (example: sales. A car salesman don’t

really need to know that much about cars, just a little more than the consumer. His job is more

dependent on his ability to read his customers, communicate his sales pitch, persuasion skills,and skills to close to deal. These are all soft skills)

  Another way to assess how important are soft skills in your career is to ask yourself three

questions 

1) Does how well I work and communicate with others critical in my performance review and

the decision for my promotion?

2) Are people in the same position as me who are well liked in the company seem to be

promoted faster?

3) Does my ability to control my temperament at work affect my performance review?

If all three is yes, soft skills are very important to develop if you want to advance in your career

  I would say in general, soft skills are more important in most business careers than hard skills.

We all know or have worked for senior people that doesn’t seem that smart (limited hard skills).

The fact remains that they are in senior positions because they have exceptional soft skills (e.g.,

know how to leverage politics to further their careers, leadership skills, management skills, self 

promotion skills etc…). 

Food for thought  – most of us have spent at least 16 years in school focused mainly on building

our hard skills full time and a little on our soft skills through team projects, sports, and social

activities. To succeed in our career, shouldn’t we spend at least another 16 years or more to

 proactively master the soft skills necessary to advance our careers?

n simpler times, relevant know-how and a clean shirt could secure you a job. That was before

soft skills were invented. Emotional intelligence quotient (EQ) is the scientific term, and sosought-after is this elusive attribute that a survey by Microsoft found that business leaders rated

it above academic qualifications.

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When, exactly a year ago, the European higher education area was created to harmonise higher 

education across the European Union, colleges and universities were obliged to include

employability and life-long learning in their curriculum; soft skills has become the catch-alltranslation and students are now expected to be launched into the jobs market fully au fait with

them.

Many companies have started holding personality tests alongside conventional interviews to

establish whether candidates' technical knowledge is matched by interpersonal prowess.

"There's a saying that hard skills will get you an interview but it's soft skills that get you a job,"

says Debbie Hance of the Association of British Psychologists. "Education and experience might

get you a foot in the door, but without soft skills such as leadership ability, self-motivation,communication skills and time management, there is likely to be a limit to how successful you

are in selling your ideas to others, working as part of a team and demonstrating your potential for 

 bigger roles."

The good news, for those of us who hit the workplace before these credentials were formalised,is that the management-speak (big business likes to call them key competencies) states the

 bleeding obvious: if you are a cheerful, fragrant, empathetic people-person you are more likely toimpress than a morose recluse with body odour.

The bad news is that if you are not abundantly blessed with soft skills you might have a toughtime acquiring them because, unlike factual knowledge, they can be nebulous concepts.

"They tend to be things that we have built up over a long period of time and fine-tuning them or 

learning new ones can mean unpicking ingrained habits or going against your natural

tendencies," says Hance. However, with a bit of trouble, jaded old-timers can brush up on their 

latent "key competencies" without a dedicated university course.

Call center agents are the straight contacts of the potential customers to your organization. It is

therefore, essential that your customer calling agents are responsible for serving the customers

with utmost help and take the company's position to the top. The agents are the pillars of a callcenter and play an outstanding role in defining the organization's CRM strategy. The training

 process of the new comers in a call center can vary in accordance with the business processes.

But, the basic aims and objectives behind the training is always ' Effective Communication Skill.'

Here are few of the techniques that are used to train the employees before starting any of their calling processes:

Explaining the Company Overview : The role played by a trainer will decide the future of the

calling agents. Explain all the matters that are related to the organization so that the agents canhave a good perspective towards working for the common goal of the organization. Show them

the work-flow of the systems; they would be doing in favor of them. Moreover, the agents should

 be well aware of all the basic details that are taking place within the organization. Allowing them

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understanding the underlying business will help them co-operate in the actual business process

carried within Call Center Services. 

Ads by Google 

Soft-skills Training : Soft-skills plays a vital role in BPO. The commanding conversation over telephone is always supported by a good command of the language. Therefore, a trainer needs to

dedicate their effort in such a manner that the calling agents can answer or ask any matter 

without any hesitation. Customers like to talk to a person who can communicate them with allthe messages without leaving them confused or unanswered.

A calling agent needs to develop their skills so that the process of communication in a BPO iscomplimented with the following traits, mentioned below:

  Telephone etiquette

  Accent-neutralization training

  Customer management

  Time management & team work 

  Crisis and stress management

Always make sure that the trainer provides you rigorous training in the above mentioned areas.

Hard Skills Training : Soft-skills followed by hard skills will give you a better chance of job

 profile. A proper know-how of all the computer fundamentals inspire you to dedicate your interest in positive manner. Learn the basic tools and shortcuts of MS Word, MS Excel and MS

PowerPoint that can assist in implementing your skills for easy understanding of VoIP telephoneequipment, desktop computer, customer care management applications.

The practical training rather than a scripted training is much better in providing a realistic

ambiance. If a calling agent caller is instructed with a real telephonic conversation, a trainer caneasily point out the areas where the calling agent is lagging behind. Ask them to practice the calls

within their colleagues until and unless the process is transparent.

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Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/customer-service-articles/how-to-train-call-center-agent-for-

better-customer-support-4877170.html#ixzz1buI7bmu8 

Under Creative Commons License: Attribution No Derivatives 

Recently i had a job interview with an International company, and despite testingtechnical / professional skills, a great importance on the interview process was given tothe "Interpersonal skills".

Interpersonal Skills is one of the elements how you are perceived by your manager andcoworkers, which play a large role in things as minor as your day-to-day happiness atthe office and as major as the future of your career.

No matter how hard you work or how many brilliant ideas you may have, if you can’t

connect with the people who work around you, your professional life will suffer.

Here are some tips, on how to improve our Interpersonal Skills.

  Smile. Few people want to be around someone who is always down in the dumps. Doyour best to be friendly and upbeat with your coworkers. Maintain a positive, cheerful

attitude about work and about life. Smile often. The positive energy you radiate will draw

others to you.

  Be appreciative. Find one positive thing about everyone you work with and let themhear it. Be generous with praise and kind words of encouragement. Say thank you when

someone helps you. Make colleagues feel welcome when they call or stop by your office.

If you let others know that they are appreciated, they’ll want to give you their best.   Pay attention to others. Observe what’s going on in other people’s lives. Acknowledge

their happy milestones, and express concern and sympathy for difficult situations such as

an illness or death. Make eye contact and address people by their first names. Ask othersfor their opinions.

  Practice active listening. To actively listen is to demonstrate that you intend to hear and

understand another’s point of view. It means restating, in your own words, what the other 

 person has said. In this way, you know that you understood their meaning and they knowthat your responses are more than lip service. Your coworkers will appreciate knowing

that you really do listen to what they have to say.

  Bring people together. Create an environment that encourages others to work together.

Treat everyone equally, and don't play favorites. Avoid talking about others behind their  backs. Follow up on other people's suggestions or requests. When you make a statement

or announcement, check to see that you have been understood. If folks see you as

someone solid and fair, they will grow to trust you.

  Resolve conflicts. Take a step beyond simply bringing people together, and become

someone who resolves conflicts when they arise. Learn how to be an effective mediator.

If coworkers bicker over personal or professional disagreements, arrange to sit down with

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 both parties and help sort out their differences. By taking on such a leadership role, you

will garner respect and admiration from those around you.

  Communicate clearly. Pay close attention to both what you say and how you say it. Aclear and effective communicator avoids misunderstandings with coworkers, collegues,

and associates. Verbal eloquence projects an image of intelligence and maturity, no

matter what your age. If you tend to blurt out anything that comes to mind, people won’t put much weight on your words or opinions.

  Humor them. Don’t be afraid to be funny or clever. Most people are dr awn to a person

that can make them laugh. Use your sense of humor as an effective tool to lower barriers

and gain people’s affection. 

  See it from their side.  Empathy means being able to put yourself in someone else’s

shoes and understand how they feel. Try to view situations and responses from another 

 person’s perspective. This can be accomplished through staying in touch with your own

emotions; those who are cut off from their own feelings are often unable to empathizewith others.

  Don't complain. There is nothing worse than a chronic complainer or whiner. If you

simply have to vent about something, save it for your diary. If you must verbalize your grievances, vent to your personal friends and family, and keep it short. Spare those

around you, or else you’ll get a bad reputation.

Enjoy,

Ana

Posted by Ana at 16:15 1 comments 

Labels: e-learnig, interpersonal skills,  personal development,  personal grwoth, self development 

Thursday, 7 February 2008

Why Soft skills ? 

Soft skills somehow is the ability to communicate effectively with co-workers, employers,

clients, customers, friends and family members! 

Soft skills is now recognised as key to making businesses more profitable and better places

to work. Increasingly, companies aren't just assessing their current staff and future recruitson their business skills. They are now assessing them on a whole host of soft skillcompetencies around how well they relate and communicate to others.

Measuring these soft skills is no easy thing. But in the most progressive companies,managers are looking for people's ability to communicate clearly and openly, and to listen

and respond empathetically. They also want them to have equally well-honed written skillsso that their correspondence (including emails) doesn't undo all the good work their face-to-

face communication creates.

Good soft skills also include the ability of people to balance the commercial needs of their

company with the individual needs of their staff. Being flexible and able to adapt to thechanging needs of an organisation also qualify as soft skills, as do being able to collaborate

with others and influence situations through lateral and more creative thinking. The abilityto deal with differences, multiculturalism and diversity is needed more than ever. Very few

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companies are untouched by the ever-widening influence of other cultures and good soft

skills facilitate better communication and people's ability to manage differences effectively.

Everyone already has some form of soft skills (probably a lot more than others may realise)

They just need to look at areas in their personal life where they get on with others, feelconfident in the way they interact, can problem solve, are good at encouraging, can

schmooze with the best of them. All these skills are soft and all of them are transferable tothe workplace.

http://www.impactfactory.com 

Posted by Amjad Alqaisi at 11:35 1 comments Labels: interpersonal skills, soft skills 

Tuesday, 5 February 2008

A Definition of Soft Skills 

Some of us might be cureous to realise what exactly soft skills is. We could say that soft skills

refers to personality traits, social graces, facility with language, personal habits, friendliness, andoptimism that mark people to varying degrees. Soft skills complement hard skills, which are the

technical requirements of a job. It can also be an important part of the success of an organization,

especially if the organisation is dealing with customers face to face.

Some exaples of soft skills as showned by Wikipedia.

Personal Qualities:

  responsibility,

  self-esteem,

  sociabilty,

  self-management,

  integrity/honesty.

Interpersonal Skills

  Participates as a member of the Team

  Teaches others

  Serves Client / Customers

  Exercises Leadership

   Negotiates

  Works with cultural diversity

Enjoy,

Panos

Posted by Panos at 16:26 3 comments Labels: interpersonal skills, soft skills, wikipedia definition 

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Recently i had a job interview with an International company, and despite testingtechnical / professional skills, a great importance on the interview process was given tothe "Interpersonal skills".

Interpersonal Skills is one of the elements how you are perceived by your manager and

coworkers, which play a large role in things as minor as your day-to-day happiness atthe office and as major as the future of your career.

No matter how hard you work or how many brilliant ideas you may have, if you can’tconnect with the people who work around you, your professional life will suffer.

Here are some tips, on how to improve our Interpersonal Skills.

  Smile. Few people want to be around someone who is always down in the dumps. Do

your best to be friendly and upbeat with your coworkers. Maintain a positive, cheerful

attitude about work and about life. Smile often. The positive energy you radiate will drawothers to you.

  Be appreciative. Find one positive thing about everyone you work with and let them

hear it. Be generous with praise and kind words of encouragement. Say thank you when

someone helps you. Make colleagues feel welcome when they call or stop by your office.If you let others know that they are appreciated, they’ll want to give you their best. 

  Pay attention to others. Observe what’s going on in other people’s lives. Acknowledge

their happy milestones, and express concern and sympathy for difficult situations such asan illness or death. Make eye contact and address people by their first names. Ask others

for their opinions.

  Practice active listening. To actively listen is to demonstrate that you intend to hear and

understand another’s point of view. It means restating, in your own words, what the other  person has said. In this way, you know that you understood their meaning and they know

that your responses are more than lip service. Your coworkers will appreciate knowing

that you really do listen to what they have to say.

  Bring people together. Create an environment that encourages others to work together.

Treat everyone equally, and don't play favorites. Avoid talking about others behind their 

 backs. Follow up on other people's suggestions or requests. When you make a statementor announcement, check to see that you have been understood. If folks see you as

someone solid and fair, they will grow to trust you.

  Resolve conflicts. Take a step beyond simply bringing people together, and become

someone who resolves conflicts when they arise. Learn how to be an effective mediator.If coworkers bicker over personal or professional disagreements, arrange to sit down with

 both parties and help sort out their differences. By taking on such a leadership role, you

will garner respect and admiration from those around you.

  Communicate clearly. Pay close attention to both what you say and how you say it. Aclear and effective communicator avoids misunderstandings with coworkers, collegues,

and associates. Verbal eloquence projects an image of intelligence and maturity, no

matter what your age. If you tend to blurt out anything that comes to mind, people won’t put much weight on your words or opinions.

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  Humor them. Don’t be afraid to be funny or clever. Most people are drawn to a person

that can make them laugh. Use your sense of humor as an effective tool to lower barriers

and gain people’s affection. 

  See it from their side.  Empathy means being able to put yourself in someone else’s

shoes and understand how they feel. Try to view situations and responses from another 

 person’s perspective. This can be accomplished through staying in touch with your ownemotions; those who are cut off from their own feelings are often unable to empathizewith others.

  Don't complain. There is nothing worse than a chronic complainer or whiner. If you

simply have to vent about something, save it for your diary. If you must verbalize your grievances, vent to your personal friends and family, and keep it short. Spare those

around you, or else you’ll get a bad reputation.

Enjoy,

Ana

Posted by Ana at 16:15 1 comments 

Labels: e-learnig, interpersonal skills,  personal development,  personal grwoth, self development 

Friday, 18 April 2008

Soft skills "Survey with AIT's Managing Director" 

In a survey conducted by our team members titled “Soft skills & E-learning” with Mr.Athanasios Zesimopoulos he answered:

What do soft skills mean to you?

This term refers to a set of personality characteristics and traits that are complementary to the

“hard skills” acquired through formal education and training. Under the wide umbrella of soft

skills someone could include leadership, motivation, communication skills, team management,confidence, versatility, reliability, efficiency among others.

Are soft skills as important as “Hard skills”? 

One set of skills balances the other.

Do you believe that soft skills can be taught through internet means (E-learning)?

Soft skills refer mainly to personality and the conduct towards others/tasks/jobs, etc. Interactionand sometimes mimicking others behavior is a key component in acquiring soft skills. If an on-

line method allows real time interaction then some soft skills could be taught by experts.

When you interview a possible employee or a student, how do you measure his/her soft skills

generally?

An interview and direct interaction are the only ways to evaluate his/her personality and his/her 

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ability to deal with a set of issues/problems/standards. Setting real problems and case studies

evaluating his/her reaction to these is one way to measure soft skills.

Do you recommend AIT to include core subject about “Soft skills” in its curriculum? 

As an academic institution that concentrates on the hard skills our students should acquired(especially in technical masters) and given the limitations of time and heavy work load such anaddition could be difficult. However, in the MBIT program there is a mandatory course on

negotiation which is in this direction. Moreover part of every day student life is presentation and

defense of the projects, homework, thesis, etc. There are also team projects and a number of activities that involve the use of soft skills. Finally, the preparation towards AIT’s career days

and the interview process with potential employers itself is a valuable activity through which a

set of soft skills are acquired.

Finally, Tomorrow we will publish the MSITT Program Director

Professor Anna Tzanakaki’s Answers (visit us again)! 

Enjoy & Learn,

Amjad Alqaisi

Posted by Amjad Alqaisi at 04:00 0 comments 

Labels: AIT, e-learnig, negotiation,  personal development, soft skills 

Tuesday, 15 April 2008

Soft Skills "Survey" 

In a survey conducted by our team members titled “Soft skills & E-learning” with Professor L.David Brown (Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government) when he visited the AIT

last month he answered:

What do soft skills mean to you?

Soft skills are personal skills, emotional skills, and managerial skills. It is different from hardscience capacities.

Are soft skills as important as “Hard skills”? 

Sure, they are a lot more important in our social life (at home). Technical people might require

more hard skills than soft skills to carry out their jobs, but soft skills are of so importance if theywant to pursue managerial positions.

Do you believe that soft skills can be taught through internet means (E-learning)?

7/28/2019 Soft Skills Knowledge

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/soft-skills-knowledge 15/15

Its hard, soft skills cannot be broadcasted; it should be transferred through interactive learning

(i.e. face to face)

When you interview a possible employee or a student, how do you measure his/her soft skills

generally?

CVs would tell something but not so much. Direct questions, body language and oral interaction

will tell a lot more.

Do you recommend AIT to include core subject about “Soft skills” in its curriculum? 

Yes very much recommended. In the MPA and MBA of Harvard business school, we have corecourses about leadership, negotiation and other soft skills.

Tomorrow we will publish Professor G. Yovanof 's Answers (Visit us

again)!