Distinction between hard skills and soft skills
A well-known competence model distinguishes between technical, methodological, social and personal competences. In this context, we can simplify the attribution of technical and some methodological competence to hard skills. We call the social and personal competencies and some methodological competencies soft skills. The more we move from left to right in this enumeration, the more transferable the competences become. Transferable means that skills can be applied equally in different functions and/or industries. Technical skills are most strongly linked to specific functions. Programming skills, for example, can only be applied in computer science. In contrast, the social skills empathy and sociability are applied both in an IT project manager and in a real estate salesperson. The self-competences are even more widely applicable. Discipline or perseverance are useful in practically all activities. For this reason, the same soft skills can be found in the advertisements for most varied positions.
Transferable skills and vocational cross displacement
People change jobs much more often than before. This means that transferable skills have become more important above all in the case of a cross displacement. In most cases, the transferable soft skills are not sufficient as an argument. Particularly in the case of high-qualified positions, the gap in technical and methodological skills should not be too large. However, applicants usually bring more with them than expected. Take an IT project manager, for example, who wants to switch to the sale of technical equipment. A match between the jobs is not visible. But a closer analysis shows that the candidate was also involved in the sale of projects. The sales processes are similar (methodological competence). In addition, he also has good technical understanding (technical competence) and sales skills (social competence). An employment is therefore realistic. Unfortunately, cross displacements often fail, as applicants do not know their transferable skills.