Hard Skills vs Soft Skills: What’s the Difference?

Every job requires a combination of hard and soft skills. Hard skills refer to technical skills and represent the specialised knowledge you bring to particular roles. Soft skills, on the other hand, refer to workplace skills and represent how you approach your duties and the people you work with.

Learn more about hard versus soft skills and discuss how to leverage both to further your career.

Hard skills vs soft skills

Technical skills and workplace skills are complementary in that you need a mix of both to perform almost any form of work. Employers typically look for candidates with a mix of technical and workplace skills because technical skills indicate that you are proficient in the practical aspects of your role, while workplace skills indicate that you can contribute to a positive and productive work environment.

Reflect on this list of examples of both “hard” technical skills and “soft” workplace skills:

Workplace skills are on the rise

Business leaders currently crave workplace skills—such as collaboration, enthusiasm, professionalism, communication, and critical thinking—even more than technical skills, according to the BBC [1].

As work becomes increasingly automated, social and emotional skills have become more crucial. Nearly all of the top 10 most valuable skills for the 2030 market in the US and the UK are workplace skills, according to Pearson and Nester [2]. 

What's more, an estimated 66 per cent of large UK employers struggled to recruit people with the skills they were looking for in 2023, according to The Oxford Learning College [3]. Some jobs now require personality tests and other ways to evaluate workplace skills.

What are hard skills?

Technical skills are the practical know-how you need to complete a specific task. For example, a nurse learns how to administer a vaccine or a graphic designer uses a software program to complete a task. They can range from learning a foreign language to using forecasting analysis to predict the stock market.

Hard skills examples

Technical skills describe what you can do based on your training and expertise in a specific field. Some examples include:

• Computer programming languages

• Data analysis

• Engineering

• Financial management

• Speaking a foreign language

• UX design

• Web development

• Writing and editing

What are soft skills?

Soft skills, or workplace skills, describe how you work. These are the attributes that make you a good employee, colleague, and overall human, regardless of your job title. For this reason, people often consider them good transferable skills. LinkedIn’s top five in-demand workplace skills in 2024 were adaptability, communication, leadership, teamwork, and problem-solving [4].

Soft skills examples

Workplace skills describe your approach to or attributes of your work. Some examples include:

• Collaboration

• Creativity 

• Critical thinking

• Empathy

• Emotional intelligence

• Organisation

• Persuasion 

• Strategic thinking

How to leverage your skills for career success

Both technical and workplace skills are necessary for career success, and one of the best places to develop skills—technical and workplace alike—is on the job.

Approach each role as a potential learning experience. For instance, you might ask yourself, how can you do this data analysis faster or more accurately? Or you might design an innovative system for collecting marketing stories within the company. This means you can build your problem-solving and critical-thinking skills alongside your technical skills.

As a colleague, you may improve your teamwork and organisational skills by working with cross-functional teams. You can organise an outing or team-building activity to foster a positive spirit. 

As a manager or leader, you can enhance your workplace skills by taking the time to get to know your team members. This might include active listening and providing mentorship or support to create a culture of belonging.

Then, be sure to highlight your complete skill set on a job application form, your CV, and during an interview.

Highlighting skills on your CV

People consider it good practice to tailor your CV to each job you apply for. Match specific technical and workplace skills from the job description to those from your list when describing your previous responsibilities. 

Here’s an example of how you can highlight both hard and soft skills on your CV. The sentences italicised indicate your possible technical skills, while your potential workplace skills are underlined:

Waiter at Pizza Express, Brighton Marina, Brighton and Hove / October 2019-Present

• Completed comprehensive training for proper food handling, including equipment cleaning, proper freezer temperatures and placement, and executing employee handwashing rules.

• Developed a new reward system for employees, resulting in improved attendance and increased employee satisfaction.

• Assisted in training five new waiters, demonstrating strong attention to detail, leadership, and conflict-resolution techniques.

Demonstrating your skills in a job application

It’s good practice to include a cover letter with your job application, which is a great place to expand on your skills and offer more detail, like the impact you had at previous companies, thanks to your skill set.

For instance, if you are applying for a marketing manager position, you might describe a project in which you curated a team of Instagram and TikTok influencers to launch a new product that resulted in five times the projected sales in the first week. This example shows you can be innovative and proficient in using platforms to measure data.

Showing your skills in a job interview

While you'll likely talk about your technical skills during an interview, you can also use it as an opportunity to demonstrate some workplace skills—like good communication and attention to detail. Polite etiquette, such as accepting a calendar invite and sending thank-you emails, makes a good first impression. The same goes for being on time, whether it is an in-person or Zoom interview.

During the interview, you may find the STAR method helpful for providing thorough responses. STAR stands for situation, task, action, and result.

Here’s an example of an answer that uses the STAR method. Once again, technical skills are noted in italics and workplace skills in underline:

• Situation: “At my former job as a sales associate, a coworker resigned just before a big deadline for their project.”

• Task: “ My manager asked me to take over the project and complete weeks of work in just a few days.” 

• Action: “I asked my manager to dial back my responsibilities for the week and delegated the work to other members of the sales team. Then, I spent two days learning about the project and brushing up on Excel. My intern and I devised a strategy to finish the assignment within five days.”

• Result: “By dedicating time to the special project, I finished on time and with accuracy. My manager appreciated my dedication and trusted me with more projects after that.”

Develop your skills with Coursera

Implementing the STAR method and showcasing your hard and soft skills on your CV are just two ways in which you can highlight your proficiency for a prospective role.

Additionally, you’ll find many ways to build your technical and workplace skills outside of your current role. For instance, you can enrol in a course, Specialisation, or Professional Certificate on Coursera to strengthen your skill set—or learn something completely new, such as with People Analytics from the University of Pennsylvania. This course can help you learn how to use data to make decisions where soft skills are relevant such as the hiring process.

Give your team access to a catalogue of 8,000+ engaging courses and hands-on Guided Projects to help them develop impactful skills. Learn more about Coursera for Business.

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