- Do you know the difference between soft skills and technical skills?
- Have you ever met someone you don't want to work with that they have weak soft skills?
Related reading article： [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/soft-skills-vs-technical-which-more-important-getting-dipesh-gurjar/](Soft Skills vs Technical Skills – Which is more important for getting jobs)
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英语:
练习区
I'll tell you a story about working with a colleague who has weak communication and collaboration skills.
The situation
I worked with a QA on testing a project. This was the 1st time we collaborated. There were many bugs reported by him. I found it hard to reproduce the bug because the description was not very clear. And no useful context was provided, such as the user's ID, and the log ID from the relevant networking response.
I chatted with him about the problem, explaining what information I needed and why the information mattered for addressing the bug. He agreed with me at the moment. But things didn't change too much. We had to go back and forth many times on the same bug.
To work efficiently, I went to his desk and talked to him face to face. He seemed busy and anxious. He complained about how busy he was working on another more important project, and why I kept interrupting him on this tedious project, and his responsibility was not to help me fix bugs but to report bugs.
What I did
I didn't respond to his anger with anger. I realized I needed to do something about it. I apologized for keeping interrupting him. And I asked him nicely about his free hours for working on my project. I booked a private 1-1 meeting with him within his free hours. I did this so he could focus on 1 project, and we could communicate in a relaxing environment.
At the meeting, I observed him reproducing bugs for me. At the same time, I tried to write down the context data as much as possible. And I put the information on the bug reports. After watching me amending the bug reports several times, he admitted that he didn't quite understand what context data was needed until now. And he'd like to write bug reports professionally from now on. With his help, I successfully reproduced every bug he reported.
After that, we had an open conversation. I told him his work was appreciated. I understood that day he just had a bad time at work. What he said only implied some work problems, nothing personal. And I'd like to discuss some soft skills topics with him if he'd love to. These topics only implied work problems, nothing personal. He opened his mind to it. So we analyzed together what was wrong with his soft skills one by one.
Poor Documentation
The bug report was poorly documented. Being able to write documents clearly and succinctly is very important for verbal communication.
Not Listening to Feedback and Not Giving Feedback
He agreed with me about the feedback at the moment, but he did nothing. That indicated he didn't listen to the feedback, yet he didn't properly give feedback. Listening to feedback and giving feedback is critical to effective communication. We don't have to agree on everything, and we should be given opportunities to express our disagreements. Ideally, everyone's voice is heard. But in reality, we still need to make decisions when everyone can't come to an agreement. After the decision is made, if your proposal is not approved, please be supportive. That's the philosophy of "I don't agree with you, but I support you".
Disrespecting Others' Work
He complained that the current project was tedious, and he preferred working on another more important project. That showed he was disrespectful to others' work. We should always respect others' work, so others will respect our work.
Negative Assumptions
He complained that I kept interrupting him. But I didn't do it intentionally. After I knew his busy schedule, I left him uninterrupted and made a reservation. What I wanted was to get the project to work smoothly, nothing personal here. Negative assumptions are poison to a healthy working environment. We should focus on the positive side.
The result
After this meeting, we had a deep conversation. We've agreed on how we communicate effectively and collaborate efficiently. It turned out that he was an open-minded person.
Thank you for sharing this awesome story with us. You did great job to answer this question. You separated the answer to: the situation, what you did, and the result. And from the answer you show your excellent soft skills.
Thanks for your feedback, Jessie. It is important to me.
The STAR method I learned from the Eleduck English camp is truly useful. It helps me structure what to talk about and how to talk.
My struggles
Actually, I always struggle to answer these behavioral questions. There are two reasons.
The lack of mindset
I lack the mindset of building soft skills explicitly. I acquired some soft skills at my work, but the process I learned them was implicity. I may know the soft skills, but I can't talk about them, because they were just rough ideas in my mind. Even worse, I didn't pay attention to soft skills at all, when I had the chance to recognize them and improve them.
Thinking in English
Soft skills are abstract ideas. Abstract English concepts are not easy to learn. Even though I know some soft skills in Chinese, I may not be able to express them in English accurately. Translating Chinese to English seems not a good idea.
Learn from the company culture
Here is what I did to talk about soft skills less struggle. If other camp members find it useful, it will be my honor.
I've paid attention to the career pages of many tech companies, where they talked about their working culture. I found GitLab's handbook interesting and resourceful. GitLab is a fully remote company with distributed teams all around the world. They embrace asynchronous workflows and communication. Almost everything is well documented, including how they collaborate, communicate, and manage projects. And what leadership they value.
Through their handbook, I could learn all kinds of soft skills concepts explicitly and systematically. Even better, I learned it natively, so no translation here. For example, I learned the concepts of "DRI(Direct Responsive Individual)", "Strong Documentation", "Positive Assumptions", and "Single Source of Truth". You may not buy some bit of GitLab's working culture, but the way they communicate transparently through documents may still inspire you.
After learning some knowledge of soft skills through the "systematic approach", I still need to pull out my memories, apply this knowledge to analyze what happened, write them down logically, and even get feedback from coaches luckily.
There is a long journey in learning English and improving soft skills. I'm grateful to be a part of this English camp. Thank you again.
I had the same struggles as you several years ago. I learned the soft skills from the course of "Achieving Success in Changing Environments" and the training course from the company I work. The way you learned soft skills in English from GitLab is awesome, Practicing those skills purposely in your work will help you grow fast. Please continue doing it, you also influence your teammates through your daily activities. I learned lots of soft skills from my manager, especially time management, organization, and communication.
Thanks for sharing your story.I had a similar experience but didn't know that was what people
called soft skills. I also learned how to tell a story from your answers.
Thanks for give us a very good example ! You're really nice to QA. I have a another copy story about QA and developer. I might be share with you later.
For me, technical skills are java language, spring stack, MySQL, Elasticsearch, MQ, Redis, and so on. And problem-solving, learning, communication, and cooperation with others are my soft skills.
Direct technical skills may not be available if I change industries, but soft skills can still be transferred.
That's right!
And for your last sentence, a revised version could be:
Thank you, JC.
For me, technical skills mean all the DevOps-related stuff, design, development, testing, and deployment.
Soft skills consist of many topics. They could be categorized into 4 topics: communication, collaboration, project management, and leadership.
Both 2 skills are essential to get the job done well. But I think soft skills are more general than technical skills, and soft skills are still useful even when transferring to another industry.
I also found soft skills are harder to build than technical skills. It takes more time to build soft skills. Soft skills determine how I work with other people, and people are complicated. How I work with other people matters, so soft skills really matter.
An excellent answer, Please also try the second popular interview question using your real story in the work or life.
Thank you, Jessie.
I'll write the answer to the second question with another comment.
I think technical skills are important for newcomers, but soft skills will become more important over time, especially for senior roles
I find it that technical skills are coding skills , include coding language, develop tools。
the soft skills means like your commication skills your leadship,how to get long with your colleague,
techsills is can be improved in shor time,but soft skills can not. It only can be improved in your real work,it total depend your job and I think soft skills is more important than teach skills
Great job, I fixed some mistakes.
I find that technical skills are coding skills , include programming language, developing tools。
the soft skills includes commication skill, leadership, team work( team spirit) and so on.
Technical skills can be improved in short time,but soft skills maybe need a longer time. It only can be improved in your real work,it totally depend on your job and I think soft skills is more important than tech skills
thanks
It depends on what type of job you are looking for. For management posts, soft skills are more important. For technical posts, they will pay more attention to technical skills.
That's ture! Maybe we should narrow the question scope to developers' domain.
I think that Soft Skills are pretty important for some special conditions. For example, Team's Technology stack always change for Company's various project. So We need team-worker can get started quickly on a new Technology stack, In this condition, Learning ability will decide how much time to spend, which belongs to Soft Skills.
You are right, in some situations, one of the soft skills may be the key to quickly solve the problems the team faces. Sometimes two or more skills make things happen together.
One tip: after commas, we should use lowercase for the first letter of the first word. If you want to highlight any word, you can use bold font.
Soft skills are more versatile and applicable to more industries. They are a basis for life and work. For example, communication skills is applicable to multiple industries and positions, and will still be needed in the future.
Technical skills are applicable to a more specific industry or even position. For example, Kubernetes skill is applicable to DevOps in software engineering, but it may be replaced by more powerful technologies in the future.
A good opinion. Pay attention to the plural. Think about the synonyms of the word “applicable”, like fitting, suitable. Try to use different adjective words.
Soft skills are more versatile and applicable to more industries. They are bases(Bases is the plural of basis) for life and work. For example, communication skill is applicable to multiple industries and positions, and will still be needed in the future.
Technical skills are applicable to a more specific industry or even position. For example, Kubernetes skill is applicable to DevOps in software engineering, but it may be replaced by more powerful technologies in the future.
I think equalyy important between soft skills and technical skills.
Technical skills can help you get ticket for work,but if you hope stay this work for a long time that depends on soft skills.
Soft skills for programmer:
Teamwork.
Communicate.
Learn.
So on.
Technical skills for programmer:
Programming language.
Understand network principles.
Design program architecture.
So on.
Soft skills can update throught communication and teamwork with others,and need a lond time.
Technical skills can promote throught self learning or exchange learn with others,and it can spurt progress in a short time.
Technical skills may out of date, and need to refresh. But soft skills may stay with you for all your life.
Good point! I revise your sentence a bit below:
Soft skills refer to the ability that gets along with people. Technical Skills refer to the ability to deal with things.
Soft skills could be used anywhere in life. It can make life better. Technical skills only could be used in some things or some areas. It can make someone more professional.
Which one is more important? I don't think it's measurable. A person with only soft skills cannot handle work, and a person with only technical skills cannot handle communication with others. The importance of two skills may be different in specific scenarios, but in general, they are equally important.
Soft Skills And Technical Skills
Soft Skills
Soft Skill is a term of sociology, it's related to the emotional quotient, personality, social etiquette, communication, language competence, optimistic of a person.
common soft kills:
Ability to participate in a team
Ability to teach others
Ability to provide services
Ability to lead teams
Ability to negotiation
Ability to motivate others
Ability to make decision
Technical Skills
Technical Skill is knowledge, technology, and method of some professional field. For example, the technology of databases, and knowledge of the network are technical skills in the software industry.
common technical skills in the software industry:
Ability to manage database
Ability to manage network
Ability to data analysis
Ability to develop a mobile application
Ability to design user interface
The Difference between Soft Skills And Technical Skills
Technical Skills is related to the industry, maybe it's rubbish in other industry. Soft Skills aren't related to the industry. They can deal with problems with a person. It can help us to better get along with others. But Soft Skills are most related to the disposition of a person, and experiences of a person and can improve some soft skills through deliberate practice.
Summary
Technical Skills can solve the professional problem of the industry. Soft skills can solve the problem of the person.
Technical skills such as a programming language,middle ware,database will help you to get a job,It is related to a industry or a certaion position.
Soft skills such as communication,problem-solving,team collaboration,learning ability will take you to the top,It has no relation with any industry.