If there\u2019s a shorthand reason for why you need communication skills to complement your technical skills, it\u2019s that you don\u2019t get paid without them. You need communication and \u201csoft\u201d skills to get work and keep working so that people continue to want to employ you to apply your core technical skills. A diverse skill set that includes communication is really the key to survival in the modern workforce, and hiring trends bear this out.<\/p>\n
In its Employability Skills<\/a> 2000+, the Conference Board of Canada lists \u201cthe skills you need to enter, stay in, and progress\u201d in the 21st century workplace. The first category listed is communication skills, specifically how to:<\/p>\n Likewise, the non-profit National Association of Colleges and Employers in the US surveys hundreds of employers annually and has found that, in the last several years, they consistently rank the following four skills as most desirable ahead of fifth-ranked technical skills:<\/p>\n When employers include these interrelated soft skills in job postings, it\u2019s not because they copied everyone else\u2019s job posting, but because they really want to hire people with those skills. From experience, they know that such skills directly contribute to the success of any operation no matter whether you\u2019re in the public or private sector because they help attract and retain customers and client organizations.<\/p>\n Traditional hiring practices filter out applicants who have poor communication skills, starting with a \u201cwritten exam\u201d\u2014the r\u00e9sum\u00e9 and cover letter. As documents that represent you in your physical absence, these indicate whether you are detail oriented in how you organize information and whether you can compose proper, grammatically correct sentences and paragraphs. If you pass that test, you are invited to the \u201coral exam,\u201d where your face-to-face conversational skills are assessed. If you prove that you have strong soft skills in this two-stage filter, especially if you come off as friendly, happy, and easy to work with in the interview, an employer will be more likely to hire you, keep you, and trust you with co-workers and clients.<\/p>\n\n
\n