International Talent Management Strategist Dorothy Dalton recently wrote a compelling blog post:“The Hard Truth About Soft Skills,” which absolutely nails the value of soft skills in a career story resume.



Dalton describes how resumes that come to her attention often do so based on the “high incidence of hard skills in the text,” but goes on to assert that “… unless the resume or professional profile tells an engaging account, the chances of the phone being picked up are slim.”



She continues to describe how articulating your success stories verbally is crucial to being able to continue through the hiring process, underscoring that “it is therefore imperative to bring clarity and show coherence around your career story as early as possible.”



Don’t Let Your Resume Be Ambushed by Less Important Details



So many resume writing blog posts focus on things like the demise of the Objective statement, formatting dos and don’ts, differences between the resume and your LinkedIn profile, whether or not to use color, charts or graphs and so on.



The problem with these types of messages is that careerists get mired in those details to the extent it ambushes their thinking from the most foundational issue: how and why they do what they do and why that matters to the target company. This relates to the what’s-in-it-for-me message that hiring decision-makers seek, but it goes even deeper. It requires a yawning reach into your career story, examining chapter-by-chapter things like your relationships with and influence toward bosses, clients, vendors and all other stakeholders.



Beware The Ineffectiveness Of Random Soft Skills



These soft skills often are omitted or, if included, thrown in randomly and ineffectively, resulting in an incoherent story.



Incorporating soft skills articulately means describing how you helped tame heated meetings and how your ability to communicate orally or in writing helped forge alliances, influence solidarity and/or move projects so they steamed ahead and achieved bottom-line goals.



In fact, your soft skills probably were most heavily relied upon when you first started your job. For each new position, you’ve either taken over after someone voluntarily left or was fired and therefore replaced an employee who was succeeding or who had failed. Perhaps even, you were recruited to pave the way for a new position. Whatever the case, you faced challenges to repair brokenness, expand on success, open new marketplace roadways – and so on.