Children from infancy to adulthood learn and develop various skills and enhance the same at home, school and workplace. They learn to communicate with people around them and become socially active. As parents and educators we should focus on teaching soft skills and the 4C's of learning to our children.

Soft skills are personality traits and behaviours you display in different situations. These are a combination of people skills, social skills, character or personality traits, attitudes, social and emotional intelligence. Interpersonal and communication skills are more specific categories of soft skills that many employers look for in job candidates. There are many soft skills that you can list on your resume, cover letter or while filling a college/ university application.

Some important Soft Skills are :

• Communication

• Collaboration

• Critical thinking

• Team work

• Problem solving

• Stress Management

Soft skills are needed everywhere and specifically when applying for a job opening or interaction at school, home or workplace. It makes a difference when we mention about soft skills in writing a college application and applying for a job opening. Now a days big corporates are looking for candidates with good communication, stress management and problem solving skills.

There is a difference between hard and soft skills. Hard skills are learned abilities acquired and enhanced through practice, repetition and education. Some examples of hard skills are a degree or a certificate, typing speed, book keeping, knowledge of MS office application, LAN, HTML etc, writing and learning different foreign languages. Soft skills on the other hand are personality traits like attitudes, actions etc which can not be measured and are developed with time.