most welcome to the course entitle soft skills the very first lecture is entitled introduction

to soft skills soft skills nowadays is not a new term as you hear it quite often by your

friends relatives and in various other circles you often attained but then hearing alone

is not enough you often think what actually ah soft skills you might have come across

the term skills but when the world soft is added it makes you more curious the other

day when father returned from the bank and said oh the new manager has very excellent

soft skills you started thinking what what this soft skills you not only thought to yourself

but then the other morning you asked your father what she so handsome does he get a

very good salary then you decided you should rather go to the bank and see how was the

manager that his soft skills are being appreciated every now and then on you are reaching there

you saw that the man was sort in height and was not attractive also but then there was

something which could have made people appreciate some of with his skills

suddenly the word skills created a sort of sensation in you and you started thinking

the people have some skills say for example a carpenter may have the carpentry skills

a doctor may have the medicinal skills a teacher may have the teaching abilities and so on

and so forth a driver a lawyer anyone for that matter in any of the profession will

have some skills or the other but what actually are the soft skills perhaps they are some

special skills and you wanted to make some more enquiries about that soft skills is actually

a buzz word all around the world it is always better to understand soft skills before we

can come to define it and the better way to understand it to know its specifications

let me give you an instance so that you will understand the term soft skills better once

i was invited to a marriage party at a very soft notice attending the party was a must

and it was the month end i didnt have much money in my pocket and i was feeling both

guilty and assumed as to how to give a suitable present to the couple i entered a nearby shop

and was really attracted to see so many valuable items in the form of gifts i was really upset

i was not in a position to decide as to what should i buy and then suddenly the young manager

of the shop intervened and said may i help you the gesture of the young man attracted

me too much and then i could see that he sold me so many things and then one after another

he also kept on telling me the prices as well as the importance

according to the need of the function and i finally bought one present from him and

was really feeling glad i was so tempted and fascinated by the behavior of the young man

that i asked him how far have you ahead and his answer really made me think a lot since

he said i dropped my final year at the college because of the economic difficulties after

all what was it in the young man that attracted me and persuaded me to buy the gift from him

actually it were some of his personal skills he was so friendly handsome though he was

not but he was always a helper his helping attitude

made me think highly of him and the way he started analyzing my needs and made me understand

the importance of dealing really can tell a lot about the skills that he purchased this

can collectively be called soft skills and here there is a point of question to note

that many of us often think that soft skills are communication skills but then was communication

skills only the remedy there because the other salesmen who was showing me the items also

spoke but he didnt have that aura that extra edge which is the young manager really had

he had some amount of perseverance some amount of friendliness some amount of reassurance

which made me feel that he was the person from whom i should buy you also come across

so many such situations where you also feel that soft skills are very important perhaps

you could realize now what your father was talking about the managers soft skills soft

skills thus is an umbrella term for various skills

now another question that arises in your mind is because when the term soft skills is used

you are reminded of hardware and software because you are living in a digital edge so

soft skills and hard skills do they also fall in the same line it is really very important

to understand the difference between the two soft skills compliment ones hard skills now

the question is what actually are the hard skills let me give you another example in

your town you come across two doctors having their clinics on the same road just a little

bit of difference and when you look at their prescriptions you find that they have very

good degrees very good qualifications both of them had a foreign degree in their hands

but then what makes you wonder is that while one doctors ah clinic is always crowded the

others is not so though both of them had read from the same college had been the toppers

of the batches but what actually mattered in their cases

that while the second one had a roaring practice the first one didnt have that here again you

will find it is a question of soft skills because if you look at the dealings of the

two doctors you will find there is a vast difference between the way they talk to their

clients they talk to their patients their staff members behave

actually it is always better if you can have a look at the two pictures here in the one

picture you find ah while the patient is analy while the patient is describing his case to

the doctor the patient says i have pain in my neck in my legs in my back and i feel weak

and sick the doctor after some moment says you are suffering from hypochondria and the

patients to stares the doctor in the face the patient couldnt understand what this hypochondria

was and started thinking that it was perhaps some deadly disease

now here you can find this doctor could not understand the limitation of the patient and

used the word which was actually very difficult for him on the other hand you see another

case where the attendant tells the patient the doctor will see you now i cant promise

that he will talk to you but he will see you now here are the two two situations and you

will find ah that you often want to go to a doctor who actually takes a case history

of yours a doctor who actually ah knows the diagnosis and the doctor who prescribes you

less medicine and who the staff are very friendly and they always have a solution for you

now this goes on to tell us that soft skills are very important it is actually not only

in case of life but you will find as you grow up the ladders because all of you are presently

if you are following a degree in a college or a university you often are thinking of

nothing but your cgpa or the percentage and then once you get your cgpn and percent is

then comes the time when either the campus selections are there or you are looking for

jobs and then one day you come to know that while you had a smaller package your friend

had a better package why was it so what actually mattered here

again dear friends mattered your soft skills now we can say the soft skills can help us

come out of difficult situations you have seen both the situations that inherited the

one when i was looking for a gift and was not able to decide without the help of a person

who was the soft manager now here also is another example and the way

ditto are dealing with each other here again the question of soft skills arises soft skills

can ensure reassurance and reliability after going through these examples you will come

to realize that soft skills are a set of skills now there are often people who say there either

the number of soft skills are each so many that it is very difficult or to tell you in

brief how many skills are needed you also often think how many skills are needed in

order to be considered a person with excellent soft skills some people say that while there

are twenty eight skills the others say there are sixty skills yet some others feel that

there are only ten skills because many of them some way or the other in their answers

to soft skills they actually overlap now the question is once we have had an analysis

of soft skills we can also create a sort of working definition for soft skills soft skills

comprised personality traits social graces facility with language personal habits friendliness

and optimism that mark people to varying degrees dear friends there was a time when you were

pursuing a course and you when become eligible you got a job and then you worked alone now

we are living in edge where you cannot work alone nowadays you cannot work only with machines

today we are living in an edge where we have to deal with people where we actually have

to come across certain situations where only the machines cannot work rather the machinery

of language the etiquette the manners the behavioral tricks and then some other extra

edges alone can help so we can say that for skills are behavioral

skills would we talk about behavioral skills we also have to understand what actually are

these behavioral skills are these behavioral skills inherent in us or should we learn them

because we are going to survive in a world today where we have to deal with people who

have different natures different tastes people from different backgrounds different cultures

different identities and then once you get a job what is important in your mind is to

climb the ladder of success in a short time you cannot do that unless and until you have

learned certain personal charms what are those charms

first is self awareness how aware you are of the present day needs of the world if you

might be having a look at the newspapers today and especially if at the instant page of times

of india you will come across different sorts of job requiring different sort of abilities

though in many cases they simply mention the criteria such as ba ma bsc msc btech m tech

or having some other additional degrees but actually they do not mention ah the other

criteria which come under the category of soft skills

now it is ah it is no wonder are to come across people who often say that many of the graduates

and post graduates today are not employable they actually do not have that skills which

can make them employ employable this is actually a very grim picture and you most often come

across news paper captions and headings also now at that time you auto make yourself aware

of what are those skills that can make you go an extra mile an extra edge

then comes flexibility and then comes persistence and perseverance as i said earlier that soft

skills are actually life skills people skills behavioral skills and we can treat them under

an umbrella term but then as i said earlier many people are under the impression that

soft skills are communication skills of course they are there but communication skills are

simply a part of the soft skills what actually are needed are some other additional skills

such as interpersonal skills management skills leadership skills team dynamics all these

skills cannot be learned just in one day it is actually a life long learning process the

more you are acquainted the people the more you are exposed to people the more you most

of the time and counter people in dealing certain intricate problems you are to be awared

that you are going to learn something or the other so that your soft skills will prompt

you to have an extra edge against others now soft skills though it cannot provide you

a job instantly because whenever the question of job comes it is actually the hard skills

now let us differentiate between hard skills and soft skills what actually are hard skills

hard skills are the subject knowledge the technical expertise that you garner during

your college in university days but then when you come out of the college or the university

what actually you need are the soft skills you of course have a technical competence

but then because of your nature either ah sometimes you become very introvert and you

are not in a position to talk to so many people naturally such people go in extra mile they

cannot go in it they cannot have an extra edge over others because your technical competence

as well but what will make you excellent sign in the job is your soft skills

here you can find the self awareness and self confidence they are actually the tools to

enable you to face other people and then when you are in a job what you will find is there

are certain situations where some decision needs to be taken there are times when you

will have to participate in meeting there are times when you will have to write certain

technical documents there are also times when you will have to take certain decisions when

you are either the ceo or the in charge of a company whatever profession you are in you

certainly require some amount of soft skills without soft skills your hard skills are hard

in only what actually you need is you actually need

to drive your hard skills through the engine of soft skills so in order to differentiate

we can also say that these soft skills are performance skills just you go back and look

at certain examples and you will find the young manager who didnt have that much of

qualification as compared to an mba but had an edge because the way he performed the way

he behaved the way he dealt with a situation proved better so we can say the soft skills

are performance skills hard skills as i narrated earlier are part of once college curriculum

soft skills are not taught in any college and universities now a days you find civil

workshops are organized there are several in service training programs all these are

there just to make employees more effective in order to carry out the desired results

soft skills thus can be said to be a part of continuous learning it is a process of

continuous learning every now and then you are in search of new knowledge new skills

and how is that possible that is possible only when you are self awared and once you

become self aware and you start learning confidence will start coming to you you would start bubbling

with confidence after a certain amount of time many youngsters they often once they

appear at interviews and sometimes or the other they cannot meet the requirement of

the recruiters then they perhaps get very frustrated some of them also become so disappointed

that they often say nothing can be done but no dear friends it this is not only the end

of the road you actually need to learn you need to go within you need to make some personal

enquiries you need to have a sort of analysis of your own achievements analysis of the answers

that you provide it to the recruiters it is very pertinent to say what a famous

recruiter one said and that will give you a lot of clue about the need of the recruiters

as well as the need of the organizations what the recruiter said was i would love to hire

a girl with pleasant smile and better communication skills than one having a very good cgpa and

doing nothing now here is a clear cut statement that tells that your cgpa alone is not the

one that can make you get a job rather there are other skills and these other skills are

soft skills you may sometimes come across certain captions which which actually reveal

startling facts what are the startling facts now look at ah these data which have been

culled from some newspapers data emerging from census two zero one one suggests unemployment

rate is high among the better qualified this is actually a report by one of the famous

newspapers named hindu what it suggests is the unemployment rate is high among the better

qualified now the question is you go to the college

you get a good degree you also have a very good cgpa but then you are not employable

you are not employable and what actually are lacking in you you perhaps require some of

those key skills which are actually very important from the recruiters point of view how do you

know what the recruiter wants as i told you the newspaper advertisements will give you

a picture of the recruitment trends now there is another caption which will make you more

painful to understand twenty three lakh people want peons job in up engineers and doctors

also included now this is really a very tragic figure when

we provide a lot of facilities to the budding engineers and doctors and other professionals

at the end of the day they are not employable this is really a very gloomy picture and we

need to analyze these pictures from the point of view of the recruiters what actually do

the recruit recruiters need they do not need only the people with degrees people may have

degrees but they may not have the requisite skills

another survey in aspiring mind that says that a good percentage of professionals today

are not employable because of their poor communication skills of course as i told you earlier that

you may have a good cgpa but in order to prove yourself suitable for the job market today

what you need are the communication skills which can help you negotiate which can help

you understand the requirements which can help you analyze which can help you evaluate

which can help you estimate which can help you go through a particular problem with a

solution that you have and for that you need to go an extra mile as i said you need to

the more intelligent which you really are but you are not utilizing your intelligence

in the right manner how to do that there nowadays have several majors being taken by even the

government there are several ways that employability is going to be generated but then you need

to learn certain skills why after all soft skills are relevant you

see nowadays the nature of jobs is changing whether it is in your country or in some other

country people actually require them who can take initiatives who can take who can have

innovative ideas and these innovative ideas will come not only from books but from other

sources also the way you become aware the way you try to understand you know there is

a debate going on between the policymakers and then the job agencies the organizations

that there seems to be something a miss there is certainly a gap between academia and industry

that is why most of the organizations even though they recruit you they take you but

after some time they actually tra try to provide you with the training that can have better

results you know in order to be successful with it from the point of view of individual

or from the point of view of organizations in order to be successful what unique require

is a better employee and a better employee is one who is aware who is confident who is

communicative who actually can take decisions who actually can negotiate who actually can

pull the organization from the critical conditions and from the critical situations otherwise

what will happen the way nowadays there is actually a mushrooming a business of colleges

coming up and that is perhaps the reason that the number of graduates and post graduates

are increasing like anything but perhaps some way or the other we are failing to instill

in these graduates and post graduates the requisites of skills which are actually required

by the industry in order to cater to the needs of industry

soft skills play a major role soft skills can make an employee more cordial it can make

him more accountable it can make him understand his responsibilities and it can also allow

him at certain situations to take decisions because you know there are certain situations

where some amount of risk is also involved there are certain situations where most of

the time your boss is not sitting to give you direction during that time you are real

initiative will have to be tested and the way you take decision or the way you come

out of that crisis makes you a better informed makes you a better equipped employee

now looking at the trends of the newspapers and the gap that exists between the industry

and the academia the formal president of nasscom mr kiran karnik had said we have to think

of ways to groom the qualified students in an effort to make them employable in the industry

the employability is the keyword now what actually can make you employable certain soft

skills though your personal charms may not work always because you have to mingle your

personal charm with the sort of the felicity of your expression the way you use words the

way you use words while writing a document nowadays it is not a world where the written

word alone is important there are other things which are also important are the unwritten

codes and it is very difficult to understand those unwritten codes how to understand them

we shall be in the course of these lectures we shall be discussing how certain situations

require certain key skills and then in certain situations not only your words but your non

words will also prove to be more beneficial today you have to write messages not with

a pen and paper not always with the written document being sent and received but you have

to deal electronically also now electronic writings they have certain limitations which

we shall discuss when you go to the writing section likewise you also have to deal with

certain communication technologies which have some other requirements and limitations depending

upon the situations at times we also have to talk two people for certain deals over

telephones and all the way you talk and the way you discuss the business deals that actually

are very important and for that what actually you need is some amount of expertise amount

of expertise in terms of language in terms of the organizational structure of the document

that you are going to draft in terms of the way you are putting a problem and then finally

thinking about a solution all these are very important

nowadays because of new challenges that are being faced by us every now and then we need

to be extra conscious you cannot write anything and everything you have to have a proper selection

of words while you are actually drafting a business documents so is the case when you

are participating in a business meeting most of the time you come across certain statements

that nowadays there is actually meeting after meeting sometimes or the other you think that

these meetings are simply a waste of time but if you think in the real spirit of the

meeting you will find that certain business transactions can be discussed and we can reach

a solution after a meeting you will sometimes find the way meetings are organized actually

it is organized to know the view points of other people also because you know you alone

cannot take a better decision a better decision should have a sort of coherence should have

a sort of mingling of the ideas because you never know whose ideas can be more effective

whose ideas can be more saleable on other occasions you also come across group

discussions when a company is facing a critical problem there are times when a discussion

is being made there are times when some people are being called to discuss both the pros

and cons of situation and then in order to take a conclusion while you are going to discuss

you sometimes find yourself very in capable why sometimes it is either because of the

fear factor of your boss sometimes also because of some of your ego problems with some of

your colleagues that you try to hide your expressions

but then this is not the right spirit actually in a gd or in a meeting all you need to do

is you need to look at others viewpoints also and you also need to present your own viewpoints

also as you grow up the ladder in the organization your responsibilities will increase and you

will find the way you have to deal with people is not one but different because different

people may have different nature they have different behavior since you wont have the

helms of affair you are at the tops slot and you want that the job has to be done you also

will have to understand the needs you also will have to understand the gaps wherever

it may be and for that the way you interact with your senior junior superior peer level

people and others there you need to be very particular about the sort of language that

you are going to use on another occasions you will also come across

some other situations where you need to represent your own organization you need to represent

your own institute and there also you have to prove a mark however sometimes it so happens

that you may not have a very good term with your boss but then when you are going to represent

your own organization you have to build a positive image of your organization and for

that you sometimes have to suppress your anger you have to suppress some of the facts but

then you have to represent in the right spirit that will actually provide a better image

of your organization dear friends life is full of challenges it

is full of opportunities at times you may feel a bit low because of some other impediments

but feeling low alone is not the solution you need to come out and for that you need

to have a sort of optimism which is also an ingredient of soft skills you need to be optimistic

you need to look ahead you always should try to learn lessons from past mistakes

you will also find that nowadays the world is in a condition where the geographical boundaries

are shrinking many multinational organizations they are also opening their offices in india

and then there are jobs that also require foreign posting now in such situations what

you need to do is you need to be culturally sensitive you need to be aware in the present

day world the organization is composed of people from different states different countries

different cultures different faiths different traditions but when you are at a particular

organization you need to respect the sentiments of others as well and for this what you need

to do is you need all this to be more accommodative you need to be more accommodating you need

to listen from others you will find when we go to the section on communication we will

talk on how you can become a good listener and then how you can become a good speaker

as well because as i said the world is going to become

one platform somebody has rightly said that the world is a global village because of the

spreading wings of globalization these cultural biases will have to be eliminated you will

have to think that you are working in organization and you are to respect the aims and objectives

of the organization and for that you need to respect you need to respect the cultural

faith of other people also sometimes or the other you will find you know

as as ah i was i was going through a report of the ilo indian labor organization where

it was said that india is facing a sort of jobless growth jobless growth now the question

is how to combat how to tackle this jobless growth in this connection the views of a vp

vice president of indian staffing federation mr rituparna chakravarthy is very important

and it actually needs serious attention because what he stated was we need to invest in and

build skills among the youth you know as we have been listening from various quarters

hence we have to look at the need of the our what is actually mandatory today is building

skills that is why the vice president of indian staffing federation says that we need to invest

and build inner skills especially among the youth our prime minister also reiterates in

one talk after another that youth is the great capital and we we need to invest in that and

how can we do that of course according to chakravarthi there has to be

a complete overhaul of our education system closely integrating it with an effective apprentice

resign now if the youth of the country are skilled naturally the country will sign because

what we need today is a skilled india that is why there are certain majors like skill

india for many of those who simply think the jobs are the only end they should realize

that there are other majors also being started like start of india make in india and then

one of the most important through which i am delivering this lecture that is nptel fine

now the motive behind this program is to empower the youth to bridge the gap to create a sort

of consciousness among the youth so that they may come forward and make india sign like

anything practice my dear friends always makes a man

perfect one should try to keep practicing always apart from ones hard skills or core

skills once you try to enhance one soft skills and once you are holding soft skills you will

find life will have a variety of flowers life will have variety of opportunities and success

will always wait for you at the front door you need not feel disappointed because you

didnt get one job you should always feel optimistic that if one job you didnt get another job

is waiting for you but for all that what you need to tell yourself

as swami vivekananda had taken a mantra and the mantra is and all of you should go with

a mantra arise awake and stop not till the goal is reached dear friends in your case

when you arise you become self awared when you awake you become self confident and when

you do not stop you become dynamic and dynamic through soft skills so that you are going

to attain the goal that you started once with i hope the very first lecture and soft skills

will generate a new a thought of consciousness we have to go a long way life is a journey

and we have to prepare ourselves for the journey both for the rainy days and for the sunny

days thank you very much we shall discuss further in our next lecture which will be

on the various aspects of soft skills thank you