What Are Hard Skills? Definition, Examples and (vs Soft Skills)

What Are Hard Skills?

Hard skills refer to abilities or skills you can teach for a particular profession. You can also refer to them as the ‘technical skills.’ 

You will often find the list of hard skills in job requirements. For instance, a UX designer will need illustrations and Adobe suite knowledge.

Individuals can often learn hard skills through training programs and education curriculums such as college, internships, apprenticeships, online courses, and so on. 

The hard skills can include manufacturing knowledge and learning how to work with computers and machines. 

To better understand hard skills definition, you can categorize them into five boxes:

Research and analysis

Here hard skills such as transcribing and statistics are needed.

People-oriented

These hard skills are for financial and administration purposes.

Manual labor

Manufacturing, plumbing, construction, electrical, and many more come under this category.

Professional skills

All the professional skills and services like accounting, legal, engineering, etc., are included here.

Creative side

Photography, copywriting, and graphic designing are creative categories of hard skills. 

Hard Skills vs Soft Skills

Hard skills are the abilities that an individual can learn. 

On the other hand, the definition of soft skills is skills that are capabilities. They are not quantifiable and subjective. 

You can learn hard skills in school via courses, books, jobs, and many more sources.

Soft skills are also called people skills or interpersonal skills. You can learn soft skills only after relating and interacting with people. 

Hard skills are beneficial for you to get a job of your interest. You can add them to your resume and cover letter to let your employer know about your abilities.

Some of the hard skills examples are as follows:

• Typing knowledge
• Language proficiency
• Certificate course or a degree
• Computer science

Some of the soft skills examples are:

• Communication skills
• Leadership skills
• Problem-solving
• Team management skills

You’ve got a good grasp on the hard skills definition. Do you know why they’re so important? Let’s take a closer look.

Why Are Hard Skills Important?

Hard skills are important in the workplace, and training your employees for the same reason will give you ample benefits too.

The benefits will range from better individual performance to the overall company success.

Product managers and employers need to understand that their performance on the projects will improve when the individual has hard skills.

Three reasons why hard skills are essential are as follows:

• Hard skills help increase the productivity of all sorts
• You will notice the employee engagement rate increasing
• There will be a reduction in the employee turnover rate

When training is provided to employees to develop their hard skills, employees feel seen and valued for their work.

They start feeling confident in the work they are doing. This overall confidence will help individuals to have job satisfaction. Therefore employees will bring more progress to the work at hand.

What Are the Examples of Hard Skills? 

Hard skills are often particular to the job. Your hard skills for a specific role would differ vastly from someone else from a different role in another team. 

However, when we talk about product management and product design, there are some technical skills worth learning to make an impact. Especially, if you are using product management software like Chisel, certain hard skills weigh a bigger impact than others. 

Let’s look at the hard skill examples by keeping the product manager at the forefront. 

Prioritization

Prioritizing important tasks and declining those that hamper accomplishing the prioritized functions is crucial to management. 

Furthermore, utilizing frameworks like weighted scoring, and so on, to support your priorities is an even more critical skill. 

Basic Business Knowledge

To be a product manager, you don’t need a degree in business. However, what you do need is some basic knowledge of the company. 

Understanding budget, revenue, profits, cash flow, etc., are some of the hard skills essential to have. 

Data Collection

The ability to gather data, analyze it, and come up with an appropriate conclusion is a crucial skill. 

This skill gives you the ability to track the progress of your development, estimate the effectiveness of your product, and examine a particular hypothesis.

Feeling confident about the various hard skill examples you’ve learned about? Ready to discover the top-notch hard skills that will make your resume stand out from the rest?

What Are the Best Hard Skills to Put on a Resume?

In today’s ever-evolving job market, having a set of hard skills is essential to thrive in any career. Hard skills are specific, teachable abilities that can be measured and evaluated, which makes them valuable to employers. Below are some of the most important hard skills that employers look for and how to develop them.

Computer Skills

Computer literacy is a must-have hard skill for almost every job today. Basic computer skills include proficiency in MS Office (Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word) and Google Drive and Docs.

Marketing Skills

Marketing skills are critical to business success, and some of the most in-demand ones include data analysis, communication, technological proficiency, project management, and people management. Understanding the culture of a particular country is also essential for effective marketing, therefore make sure to acquire this hard skill.

Negotiation Skills

Negotiation skills are vital for selling products, purchasing merchandise, and creating partnerships with other organizations.

Formal Education

Although a degree is not always necessary for every job, formal education is still highly regarded by employers. College degrees demonstrate dependability, reliability, and the acquisition of critical thinking and interpersonal skills.

Writing Skills

Effective writing is one of the most important hard skills crucial for any role. Communication must be tailored to the audience, and writing skills are vital in numerous fields, including business, journalism, and academia.

Customer Service Skills

Customer service skills are not limited to retail and require more than soft skills. A good customer service representative must anticipate the customers’ specific needs and concerns based on their knowledge of the company and the customers.

Foreign Language Skills

Knowing how to speak a second language is highly valuable, especially in a globalized marketplace. It is essential to understand cultural nuances when working with companies and customers from different countries.

Presentation and Conferencing Skills

Being able to give a good presentation is more than just having informative data. A good presentation must be graphically appealing and intelligible to non-experts or skeptical experts.

Design Skills

Design skills are essential in various roles, including graphic design, medical illustration, and UX. The necessary design skills include knowledge of Acrobat, color theory, print layout design, Photoshop, and typography.

Resume Writing Skills

Last but not least, we have resume writing as the most essential hard skill. Resume writing is a crucial hard skill because it determines whether a candidate will get an interview or not. A good resume must focus on hard skills that are related to the job and avoid listing too many soft skills.

Developing hard skills requires time and effort, but it is an investment in your future career. Formal education, online courses, mentorship, and on-the-job training can all help you build these skills. By mastering these essential hard skills, you’ll become a valuable asset to any employer.