Hard skills and soft skills in the structure of professionally important qualities of representatives of socionomic professions
Introduction. The article focuses on the correlation between the concepts “professionally important qualities”, “hard skills” and “soft skills” in relation to socionomic professions. The interest in “hard” and “soft” skills and competencies has arisen in recent years. On the one hand, it stems from the search for new opportunities and aims to improve the efficiency of human labor. On the other hand, the new concepts undeservedly displace such well tested and proven categories as “professionally important qualities”, “psychogram” and “professionogram”. Hard skills are “hard” competencies (specific knowledge and skills necessary for a specific job position), while soft skills are “soft” competencies (flexible skills that contribute to effective activity in various professional fields). Materials and Methods. The authors continue the age-old discussion on what is more important: a strong professional with serious existential voids and personal deficits, or a good person without work experience who is lacking the necessary professional skills. Results. The article considers a number of popular but erroneous views that declare the importance of certain skills for specific professional groups. The authors analyze the ideas on the topic put forward in Russian and foreign literature. The authors also consider the argument that soft skills are important not only for a particular professional activity, but also in general for achieving success in life. It is maintained that the role of soft skills increases as a person goes along professional path. Conclusions. Hard skills are most often mastered in the course of study in educational institutions, on professional development and retraining programs, and at trainings or seminars. In contrast, soft skills are learned not only during formal training but are reinforced by trial and error in the process of professional activity. The article considers the authors’ program “Emotional Intelligence” designed to improve awareness, stress tolerance and emotional management skills: the development of a selected soft skill as part of development of soft skills of socionomic professionals is used as an example.