How to Improve Your Soft Skills
Hard skills really need to be possessed by everyone, where it is an ability to do something specific, such as coding, foreign languages, sports, etc. Hard skills are obtained and valued by the community as a value obtained from formal institutions such as schools or lectures. However, hard skills alone are not enough to prepare for the future to support our survival in the marketplace. For this reason, soft skills are also needed which are often not given and taught in formal educational institutions.
Departing from these problems, Ansell Benedy as an Informatics Engineering student at ISTTS and Koko East Java 2020 shared material about how to improve soft skills in the KSP Season 11 Episode 2 activity entitled "How to Improve Your Soft Skills". The activity, which was held on Tuesday, October 26, 2021, was carried out through a Zoom meeting and broadcast live on the KSP ISTTS Youtube Channel starting at 13.00-14.30.
Quoted from factual sources, Ansell said that soft skills are communication skills, one's characteristics, inherent social intelligence, and good adaptability in life and the world of work. These four points are important and complementary to improve soft skills and are needed by students. In addition, Ansell also gave examples of what basic soft skills students should have.
The first soft skill is communication. Communication includes public speaking, negotiation, and organization. Through his experience during Koko East Java 2020, Ansell gave some tips in communication. For example in public speaking, it is necessary to pay attention to gesture or body language when speaking in front of many people, courage and confidence. Then it was also conveyed about how to take good persuasive actions in negotiations, for example in offering something to be offered with an attractive and educative opener. As well as in organizations, where through organizational activities will make us find new problems and allow us to learn to find solutions, make us also learn to lead people or learn how to communicate with others.
In addition to communication, other soft skills that students need to possess include problem solving, leadership, decision making, and time management. Every soft skill that can be honed and owned by students in the end will really help students' lives, and we also should not be afraid to try things and opportunities that come in our lives because the best learning is from our experience. In the future, soft skills can be an added value in addition to hard skills in recruitment carried out in the world of work.
At the end of the event, Ansell also invited several people to practice Public Speaking by introducing themselves and the most interesting thing, Ansell was given prizes directly. So this time the KSP is not just a theory but also a direct practice in the field, this is also done to evaluate each other and find out things that need to be improved from the participants' public speaking.
