What are Soft Skills?
Soft skills are the more intangible and non-technical abilities that are sought from candidates. It is a sociological term relating to a person‘s Emotional Intelligence Quotient- EQ includes the ability to listen well, communicate effectively, be positive handle conflict, accept responsibility work well with others. Soft skills are behavioral competencies, they enhance an individual‘s interaction, job performance, and career prospects.
In this blog, let’s understand in detail about 10 soft skills required for success in competitive exams. We, the Entri team focus on your overall development and equip you with all the relevant skills which today’s competitive world demands.
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10 Most Essential Soft Skills Required for Success in Competitive Exams
Here are the 10 most essential soft skills required for success in competitive exams. Check out each of them and try to include them in your daily routines or habits, thereby taking an additional step towards your goal.
1. Goal Setting
Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about our ideal future, and for motivating our self to turn our future vision into reality. The process of setting goals helps us to choose where we want to go and what we want to achieve in our life. It gives direction to life. The setting of goals gives us a long term vision and at the same time short term motivation.
2. Planning and Execution
If proper planning is done then one can utilize time in an efficient manner. While making plans one must plan each and every day. Keep a schedule of daily activities to minimize conflicts and last-minute rushes.
Plan each day. Planning your day can help you accomplish more and feel more in control of your life. Write a to-do list, putting the most important tasks at the top. Keep a schedule of your daily activities to minimize conflicts and last-minute rushes. Prioritize your tasks. One must be able to identify more important and less important tasks and accordingly one prioritizes the tasks. This will help in spending time and energy on important tasks only. Say no to nonessential tasks.
3. Motivate Yourself
You should be able to motivate yourself to get tasks done and take the initiative to find new ways to improve upon not only yourself and your work. When the world is filled with many negative factors, one has to win hearts with a positive approach. You will need them the most when you will have to work on certain tasks all by yourself, and when you need to know your strengths and weaknesses. Look at how far you have reached from where you started rather than counting the number of obstacles on the upcoming path.
4. Improve your Communication Skills
This is one of those skills you hear about all the time, and that’s for a reason. Communication is the key to any human interaction, especially in the workplace. In the modern world, research claims that around 70% of the job opportunities come through networking. Building a strong network and maintaining it would help you to reach your goal much faster. And even in competitive exams, effective communication skills take the major role. There are many instances where group discussion and quite a no. of personal interviews are conducted before final selection. Working on your speaking skills would help you score better here.
5. Verbal Ability
Verbal ability is tested to find out how the candidate comprehends the data and understands the meaning of words used, to find out a person‘s grammatical competency. The Syllabus covers reading comprehension, etymological approach to vocabulary, synonyms, and antonyms, grammar, analogy, etc. Thus for preparing to answer well in this section one must read more and more. Reading has to be consistently practiced for a few months or even more.
Check out the latest article on vocabulary based on Hindu editorial here
6. Problem Solving
Problem-solving skills require breaking the barriers, the mind should be free to move into the problem-solving territory. It involves understanding problems; to solve the problem different techniques are used one such is brainstorming sessions. This process allows all those creative solutions to tumble out onto the table. Another process is analyzing the problem. Analyze the problem step by step and try to eliminate irrelevant choices.
7. Data Interpretation
Data Interpretation has no particular syllabus. It tests one‘s speed, decision making capability, and analyzing data. When information is arranged in a systematic manner or an organized form or presented systematically it is called data. Data interpretation is to take out maximum information from given data of information.
8. Quantitative Ability
Quantitative ability measures the numerical ability and accuracy in mathematical calculations to problems of arithmetic reasoning, graph and table reading, percentage analysis, categorization, and quantitative analysis. In various competitive examinations, there is a section to test a candidate‘s quantitative ability. There are multiple-choice questions, and all of these require quick calculation abilities and sharp analytical skills. For this student, fundamental knowledge of mathematics needs to be strengthened. Quantitative aptitude covers topics like HCF/LCM, Decimal fractions, Profit and Loss, Time and Distance, Simple and Compound interest, Probability, etc.
9. Time Management
This is one of the very crucial skills that help you stand out in many contexts, both while preparing for the exam and during the exam time. During the exam understand the art of leaving the toughest questions and answer those which you are confident about. In the time of exam preparation, ensure you follow your study plan for each day, and make changes if required. Life gets busy, both in and out of the workplace, if you are a full-time working employee. You need to be able to balance your workload and prioritize your tasks.
Candidates who manage their time well can efficiently prioritize tasks and organize their diaries while adopting an attitude that allows them to take on new challenges and deadlines that help them save time for say one learn more concepts effectively.
10. Critical and Lateral thinking
Lateral thinking is the ability to think creatively or outside the box‘. It refers to one‘s skill of problem-solving from an unexpected perspective. This skill includes the ability to think critically, creatively, analytically, and innovatively. It refers to a new approach to problem-solving or looking from a completely new perspective. Lateral thinking as a special kind of thinking that is distinct from ordinary thinking or vertical thinking. Vertical thinking is a traditional type of thinking. Both types of thinking are complementary to each other.
Check out this article to know about best government jobs for 12th pass
Always remember that Hard skills are useless without soft skills.
To conclude, most competitive exams now demand smart work and not hard work. Just mugging up the concepts or random reading doesn’t help one to achieve their aim. Here comes the role of soft skills, it all depends on HOW we prepare than WHAT we prepare. As someone said, there is a difference between hearing and listening. Take the right path to reach your goal. Entri App wishes all the candidates the best luck for all the upcoming exams.
