IMPORTANCE OF SOFT SKILLS IN STUDENTS LIVES: BOTH AT COLLEGE AND AFTER COLLEGE (Pages 117-124) by Ms. Nancy Karthick in THE INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH SPECIALIST / ISSN: 2350-1499 (Online); 2350-0751 (Print)

In this cutthroat world of competition of being the chosen one isn’t all that is needs to get ahead. Your success is also contingent on your emotional intelligence. With the varying educational trends, resourcefulness in educational courses, availability of masses of qualified personnel, the competition for job acquirement and job sustainability is becoming more and more hard-hitting. To get an edge over the competitors, students are left with no choice but to add values to their hard skills with soft skills to exhibit their true potential. Hard skills are academic skills, while soft skills are self-developed, interactive, communication, human and transferable skills. Literature suggests that hard skills contribute to only 15% of one’s success while remaining 85% is made by soft skills. Most employers these days want to hire retain and endorse persons who are steady, quick-witted, ethical, and self directed, having effectual communication, willing to work and learn and having positive attitude. This paper urges faculties and trainers to take distinct responsibility in the aspect of training students in Soft Skills. Faculties, who teach / train them have a great influence over them because they spend most of their time with them. Especially in engineering colleges, the professors who train students in hard skills are in a much better position to blend Soft Skills along with hard skills efficiently, thus bringing out a power packed module that shapes the students personality. Students, on the other hand, are also responsible for this situation because they focus more on acquiring technical knowledge, putting Soft Skills in the backseat. They realize this only when placement time is near. If both are combined together, the output is a better professional and a superior human being. All it requires is a little bit of extra effort from the faculty’s side, a little care from the parents’ side and a little more effort from the student.This paper is the outcome of an exploration of the effect that Soft skills has on the life of a student as well as the effect they have on his/her life thereafter when they become a professional Key words: Soft skills training, hard skills, communication skills, teachers, education.