Hard skills: defin­i­tion and list

The term “hard skills” contains all those skills that can firstly be learned and secondly proven or demon­strated. This includes language skills, computer program knowledge, pro­gram­ming skills, and many more. Your hard skills are your toolbox full of sturdy skills. In contrast, soft skills are more difficult to measure, and describe character traits such as re­si­li­ence, endurance, and team spirit. In this article, you can find all the in­form­a­tion on what hard skills are, which ones exist, how to include them in your CV, and which pro­fes­sion­al skills are par­tic­u­larly important to employers.

Hard skills are skills that can be actively learned, measured and often proven through qual­i­fic­a­tions or by demon­strat­ing them. Typical hard skills that you may learn at school include a foreign language, typing tech­niques, and IT and software skills (e.g. MS Office). In the course of your pro­fes­sion­al career or training, you will often acquire other hard skills – for example, by expanding your skills at work or attending further training courses. This may include skills and knowledge in areas such as ac­count­ing, ad­min­is­tra­tion, banking, editing, in­form­a­tion tech­no­logy, en­gin­eer­ing and main­ten­ance, server operation, research, trans­la­tion, project man­age­ment, and many others. Many of these hard skills can be proven by cer­ti­fic­ates and work ex­per­i­ence.

By having a personal list of hard skills, you can show a potential employer which set of skills you offer. These skills enable a company to assess whether or not you fit a par­tic­u­lar job profile. The less meas­ur­able soft skills, on the other hand, are typically checked by an employer during the ap­plic­a­tion process.

Hard skills are important because they expand your CV and make you an in­ter­est­ing person to work with. In addition, your hard skills will tell you whether you spe­cial­ise in a par­tic­u­lar area and have the ap­pro­pri­ate expertise. For example, if you have advanced knowledge of multiple pro­gram­ming languages, most employers will think you are a capable pro­gram­mer. If you speak three or more languages, you have a talent for languages and com­mu­nic­a­tion ex­per­i­ence. Through in­tern­ships and ap­pren­tice­ships, you can expand your portfolio and show that you’ve acquired these skills. Hard skills help you sell yourself as an applicant at the highest possible price; they are what you can offer a potential employer first and foremost.

To decide how best to present your hard skills, you should first pri­or­it­ise them. The best idea is to decide for each in­di­vidu­al ap­plic­a­tion which skills you would like to highlight in the cover letter, which skills should appear in the CV, and which less relevant skills to leave out. The job ad­vert­ise­ment will already indicate which spe­cial­ist skills are ex­pli­citly sought.

The hard skills relevant for the ap­plic­a­tion should appear on your CV as they can be easily listed: Typically these are subject-specific skills, language skills, software skills, knowledge of pro­gram­ming languages, design, or customer con­sult­ing. Soft skills are not usually included on the CV because they need a more detailed ex­plan­a­tion.

Pro­fes­sion­al skills are usually well placed under the heading “education” or “ap­pren­tice­ship” e.g. “2012-2015 Bach­el­or's degree in business ad­min­is­tra­tion at the Uni­ver­sity of Central Lan­cashire with a focus on em­ploy­ment law and corporate man­age­ment” or “Manager training with a focus on project man­age­ment”. This not only keeps your CV nice and stream­lined, but also logically links your career with your hard skills.

Skills that cannot be included under the headings “education” and “career” can also be listed in a separate category (e.g. “knowledge and skills”). Please note, however, that only the really important skills should be mentioned here. Usually a section like this appears at the end of the CV.

If you find one of your main hard skills as a re­quire­ment in the job ad­vert­ise­ment, you should also stress in your cover letter that you possess this skill. This not only signals that you are a good match for the job profile, but also that you have taken the time and thought carefully about what to submit before sending the ap­plic­a­tion. Depending on the job profile, it may also be useful to emphasise a few important soft skills, such as team spirit and flex­ib­il­ity. This suggests a certain degree of self-con­fid­ence – but don’t ex­ag­ger­ate, otherwise the cover letter will be too long and may come across as arrogant to the reader.

A list of hard skills will never be fully completed, as there are simply too many skills that are relevant to many different pro­fes­sions. LinkedIn published an article revealing which hard skills are currently most in demand among re­cruit­ers and personnel. Here’s a short in­tro­duc­tion to them:

Data analysis and data in­ter­pret­a­tion are extremely practical skills in the tech­no­lo­gic­al working world. By applying stat­ist­ic­al methods, you as a data analyst are able to obtain valuable in­form­a­tion from a data set. Whether you’re working with survey research, clinical studies, or data mining, there are hardly any pro­fes­sions today for which a minimum level of data analysis knowledge is not important.

Knowledge man­age­ment is a rather su­per­or­din­ate term that includes all those strategic and op­er­a­tion­al skills that help to deal with knowledge as ef­fect­ively as possible and apply it prof­it­ably. Knowledge man­age­ment is based on theories and findings, e.g. from the fields of business ad­min­is­tra­tion, computer science, or social science.

With project man­age­ment, the emphasis is on the word “man­age­ment”. This hard skill enables you to allocate resources ef­fi­ciently and ef­fect­ively to lead a project to success. This often includes an ap­pro­pri­ate level of lead­er­ship com­pet­ence if you are su­per­vising a project team from a senior position. When it comes to filling ma­na­geri­al positions, most companies are keen to have practical ex­per­i­ence in this area. This is def­in­itely the case when your work is project-oriented.

Change man­age­ment refers to the ability to develop new strategies, systems, processes, etc., in order to ex­tens­ively change and redefine a company or part of a company. This enables the change manager to re­struc­ture misguided struc­tures and put them on the right track. You use this hard skill, for example, when a company is re-branding or re­struc­tur­ing itself in­tern­ally. But it is also useful if you want to re­or­gan­ise your own team or redefine certain con­ven­tions such as work dis­tri­bu­tion or workflow.

Millions, even billions of people today use social media such as Facebook and Twitter. The pro­fes­sion­al handling of these networks, however, is a hard skill, which shouldn’t be un­der­es­tim­ated. On the one hand, it involves knowing how the website in question works and having some ex­per­i­ence in gen­er­at­ing as much attention as possible. On the other hand, it is important to correctly assess the relevance, reach, and target group of these networks for the company and to com­mu­nic­ate ap­pro­pri­ately via them. After all, using social media care­lessly can have serious re­per­cus­sions. Modern companies are therefore in­creas­ingly listing hard skills in social media as a core com­pet­ence.

Digital expertise is not so much a single skill, but rather a col­lec­tion of hard skills. These skills enable the efficient use of digital tools. In addition to data pro­cessing and backup, this includes creating digital content and safely using com­mu­nic­a­tion tools and man­age­ment systems of all kinds. Digital expertise generally refers to your ex­per­i­ence with all facets and ap­plic­a­tion areas that use the computer and/or the internet as primary tools.

This hard skill gains relevance when you apply as a candidate for a lead­er­ship position. For a position like this, a com­pre­hens­ive mix of skills is required in order to achieve the company's goal. Two of the most important skills are lead­er­ship and per­form­ance. This will make you a re­cog­nised leader and respected authority. However, company man­age­ment also places high demands on your or­gan­isa­tion­al talent and therefore demands several of your soft skills. Corporate man­age­ment is typically a hard skill that is slowly built up over the course of a career and proven by practical ex­per­i­ence. However, young founders in par­tic­u­lar often find them­selves in the situation of having to acquire a basic un­der­stand­ing of corporate man­age­ment as quickly as possible.

Today, pro­gram­ming is one of the most sought-after skills. Depending on industry and company/project, certain pro­gram­ming languages are more in demand than others. However, an ex­per­i­enced pro­gram­mer will master a certain set of languages so that they can par­ti­cip­ate in projects as flexibly and ex­tens­ively as possible. Some companies ask spe­cific­ally for certain pro­gram­ming skills; for example, a basic knowledge of HTML is helpful for working with many content man­age­ment systems (where HTML is actually a markup language, but is often mentioned in the same breath as pro­gram­ming languages).

A defin­it­ive list of important hard skills is hard to come by. Depending on the industry and job, the employer requires more spe­cial­ised skills, while some of the generally important hard skills are seen as less important. The in­di­vidu­al job profile is always decisive.

The more languages you speak, the more suitable you are for jobs involving in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­nic­a­tion. The benefits of more specific language skills are highly dependent on the job profile. In in­ter­na­tion­al companies with an in­ter­na­tion­al workforce, however, it is always ad­vant­age­ous to say if you have any ad­di­tion­al language skills, even if these are rather rudi­ment­ary.

Many jobs require you to be able to express yourself well and ef­fect­ively in text form. Whether you need to design content, com­mu­nic­ate at work via text, or write internal documents in a com­pre­hens­ible way: Text fluency and text security play a central role in today's working world. In most cases, your education and training will tell you how confident you can be with texts. However, it is sometimes customary to send sample texts with your ap­plic­a­tion in order to prove your textual skills.

Among the hard skills, typing speed is a rather banal ability. However, the faster you can type without making any errors, the more ef­fi­ciently you can perform certain tasks. However, ten finger typing is only required in very few jobs.

Your own abilities are important, but it is also a good hard skill to pass them on to others. Certain jobs require a basic un­der­stand­ing of coaching, i.e. the goal-ori­ent­ated, personal teaching of other people. Coaching also requires a solid found­a­tion in terms of soft skills, e.g. knowledge of human nature, or­gan­isa­tion­al talent, problem-solving com­pet­ence, and empathy.

Depending on the job profile, ap­plic­ants are expected to be able to handle certain software safely on the first working day. Most often, employers require basic ex­per­i­ence with Microsoft Office programs such as Word and Excel. Depending on the industry, employers want to be confident with more spe­cial­ised tools such as graphics editing pro­grammes (Photoshop, InDesign), content man­age­ment systems (WordPress, Typo3), and SEO tools (XOVI, SISTRIX).

Com­mu­nic­at­ing with customers is a major task in many pro­fes­sions. Ac­cord­ingly, practical ex­per­i­ence in this area is often important and should be defined as a hard skill that needs to be learned. Many soft skills are involved: Depending on the industry, target group, product, and customer base, the more em­path­et­ic, ana­lyt­ic­al, organised, and com­mu­nic­at­ive you are, the better customer advisor you will be. Some in­dus­tries require as much flex­ib­il­ity as possible, while others rely on strict dis­cip­line. The hard skill of customer con­sulta­tion and/or customer ac­quis­i­tion is therefore often learned by means of further education and ap­pren­tice­ships and doc­u­mented with cer­ti­fic­ates.

This generic term refers to a col­lec­tion of hard skills that are relevant for marketing. A dis­tinc­tion should be made between online marketing and tra­di­tion­al marketing. Hard skill marketing can only be iden­ti­fied through practical ex­per­i­ence. Important skills include com­mu­nic­a­tion skills (internal, in­ter­per­son­al, public, customer-ori­ent­ated), present­a­tion tech­niques, ana­lyt­ic­al skills, and language skills. In addition, there is a mix of social and personal soft skills.